


i'm not america's sweetheart

by Anonymous



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Light Dom/sub, Rule 63, Women in the NHL, ft inadvertent cockblock kevin hayes, the inherent difficulty of being a woman in a male-dominated world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 17:57:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23700967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Travis was never under the impression that playing in the NHL as a girl would beeasy.
Relationships: Travis Konecny/Nolan Patrick
Comments: 63
Kudos: 445
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so! i’ve never written a rule 63 before but always kinda wanted to try? and honestly, what better time than this *gestures at the world* to try something self-indulgent just because
> 
> the story is basically done, just editing and polishing. so updates will be frequent, ch. 2 should be up early next week!
> 
> title is from the song by elle king and in general, this fic is brought to you by the “country kind of love” playlist on spotify that provided the vibe for this and subsequently fucked up all my algorithms. so don’t ever say i didn’t sacrifice for you!!

Travis was never under the impression that playing in the NHL as a girl would be _easy_.

It isn’t easy even if you’re a guy, obviously. But she always knew that for her, it would be that much harder, even just from the reactions when she told people she wanted to—when she was six and people would laugh and when she was 14 and scrawny and people would give her a pitying smile. She thinks of all those people a lot now.

There are a half-dozen or so women scattered across the league now, but she’s the only one on the Flyers. The first one, too. She gets shit from the media, from the fans, from her own teammates sometimes. All of which she’s learned to handle. And while she isn’t small for a girl, she’s definitely small for an NHL player, so of course she gets shit from opposing players, too. Whatever. Fuck them. A part of her—a big part, to be honest—likes it because Travis knows she’s better than almost all of them. She just smirks and takes it and fights back because if they ever sensed weakness, it would be worse.

Tonight it’s number 23, whose line is unfortunately matched with hers and who will not get off her fucking ass. Travis can chirp with the best of them, but it pisses her off when guys resort to cheap shots about her gender—calling her a bitch or a cocksucker, assuming she’s fucking everyone on the team, whatever. It’s such low-hanging fruit, they could at least do her the courtesy of being more creative.

When she gets back to the bench with what must be a terrible expression on her face, Nolan leans over Oskar sitting between them. “What did he say?”

“Forget it, Patty.”

“Teeks.”

“What do you _think_ he said?” she snaps, reaching for a water bottle. “The same shit they all say, Jesus.”

He goes over the boards then, and Travis watches with satisfaction as he promptly strips the puck from 23, who seems to be not only an asshole but also pretty bad at hockey. She loves it when that happens.

On her next shift 23 is on her again, surprise, and as she turns to get the puck after a couple illegal cross-checks to her back, he sticks his skate by her stick and goes down.

The ref throws his arm up and whistles, calling her for tripping. “What the _fuck_!” Travis yells at him, whirling around. “That’s such bullshit, he totally fell. I didn’t touch him.”

Number 23 gets back to his feet and picks up his stick. “Shut the fuck up, you fucking cunt.”

This guy really is an idiot. The ref is _right there_, ushering her to the box, and he blows the whistle again. There’s an automatic five-minute major for gendered slurs—it’s literally the least the NHL could do, Travis supposes—but the refs barely ever call it, partly because the guys are at least smart enough to wait to say shit like that until they’re out of earshot. Not this dumbass.

Travis lets herself stew in the box, soaking in all the taunts from the opposing fans and allowing them to wind her up. Sometimes she tries to calm herself down, knows that playing _too_ far over the edge isn’t good for her game, but not right now.

As the seconds of her penalty tick down, she pays more attention to what’s happening on the ice. Nolan’s out there, battling for the puck, and she half-stands as she watches. He gets it, pivoting quick to launch a breakaway, and Travis tears out of the box the second the guy opens the door. She taps her stick against the ice but Nolan’s already got his head up, looking for her. He sends a rocket of a pass, clear up the ice, and she settles it and then goes on autopilot—forehand, backhand, five-hole, easy as pie.

The away crowd instantly quiets, her second-favorite sound behind the screaming fans at the Farg, and Nolan gets to her first, crushing her against the glass and yelling in her ear. “Fuckin’ beauty, Teeksy.”

“That was grade-A sauce, buddy.”

He pats her on the helmet—she hates the seven inches he has on her, she really does—and she smirks as she skates past the penalty boxes, even though 23 pointedly isn’t looking at her.

Travis mostly forgets about him after that, and thankfully so does the rest of the team. Every once in a while Claude or Nolan or someone can’t resist going after guys like that, but she’s mostly trained them to let her fight her own battles, which she’s more than capable of doing. Then the Flyers go on the power play in the third, and she’s looking for someone to pass to when the whistle blows. She turns and sees 23 tussling with Nolan against the boards, and the familiar heat rises in her blood as she skates over.

She gets her fists into his jersey to wrench him away from Nolan, and he shakes her off with a sneer. “You always have your girl fight for ya, 19?”

Nolan laughs, and Travis grins at the sound, gnawing on her mouthguard. It’s his mean, dismissive laugh, and she loves hearing it on the ice.

“Yeah,” he says, “any fucking day of the week. You wish you were so lucky.”

Being a girl in the NHL is never easy, but sometimes it’s fun.

* * *

Travis gets on the bus after the game, settling in her normal window seat, and checks her phone. There’s a text from her mom with a Twitter link, which she clicks on without hesitation because her mom never sends her anything bad.

It’s a tweet from a reporter with a video of Nolan after the game, and it starts playing automatically.

“Your little scuffle with Smith in the third,” the reporter starts. “He’d been exchanging some words with Konecny earlier, were you defending her honor?”

_Exchanging some words_, Travis thinks. For fuck’s sake. They called the penalty, everyone knows what he said.

In the video, Nolan rubs a hand over his face and looks irritated. “TK can defend her own honor. He had some things to say to me, so I had some things to say to him. That’s all.”

“They were going back and forth,” another reporter says, “and she seemed pretty upset about it. Do her emotions negatively affect the team?”

“Do her emotions affect the team,” Nolan repeats, in that tone she knows he uses when he thinks the person he’s talking to is an idiot. “Are you fucking kidding, were we watching the same game? She scored the game-winning goal. She’s really fucking good, and she’s the best teammate in this locker room. I wish we had 20 of her.”

The video ends there, and Travis turns the screen off on her phone. Twitter will fall over themselves to praise Nolan for his comments, and there will be crude jokes about the “20 of her” thing, but she doesn’t even care. She appreciates it, just this once.

She pulls out her Switch and is absorbed in her game by the time Nolan plops down next to her with an annoyed grunt. He leans over her shoulder and looks at the screen. “There’s more to do in that game than fish, you know.”

“Shut up, the fishing is important.”

He watches for another minute. “Got yelled at for cursing at a reporter,” he mumbles.

“Fuckin’ troublemaker,” she says, and he snorts.

“I, uh, talked about you, in my postgame.”

Nolan doesn’t say _sorry_, but she knows it’s implied. Most people are convinced she’s either a lesbian or fucking one of the guys, and anything complimentary a teammate says about her or vice versa is usually enough to fan those flames again. She stays off social media because she’s not a masochist, but she knows it’s out there.

“I heard.”

“Were you eavesdropping?”

“No, my mom sent it to me.”

“Your mom loves me,” Nolan says smugly, which is unfortunately true. Travis just makes a face and goes back to her game.

* * *

The road trip chugs on, and the next night they’re at a bar in Nashville. Travis is on the inside of the booth, fidgety and impatient as she nurses her second beer, and she’s starting to feel a little claustrophobic boxed in against the wall by Kevin. She finally slips out when he gets up to get another drink, and she runs into Nolan on his way back from the bathroom.

“I’m heading out,” she says.

“A couple of us are ready to leave, if you wait a sec we can walk back together.”

“Nah, I’m going to that other bar across the street.”

Nolan frowns. “With who?”

“By myself.”

“Why?”

“Uh, cause I wanna pick up without all you assholes breathing down my neck and judging me.” He frowns harder, and Travis moves past him, not in the mood to hear a lecture on safety or whatever. He grabs her arm, but she twists out of the grip. “I’m a big girl, I can take care of myself.”

“I know,” he grits out. “Text me when you get back to the hotel.”

“Fine.”

Travis manages to slip out of the bar without attracting the attention of anyone else, and she trots across the street to the bar she noticed earlier. She generally saves her picking up for road trips. There’s a smaller chance of finding a guy who just wants to tell his friends—or worse, the internet—that he fucked that girl on the Flyers. Plus, in Philly it just seems to get around somehow, and then there are thinly-veiled illusions to her being a partier or a slut or whatever, even though she hooks up _way_ less than most of the other single guys.

She does though, sometimes. She goes on dates with guys, every once in a while, and even has gone on multiple dates with a couple of them. But she’s never really dated anyone, Dated with a capital D. Travis is a lot, she knows, in most senses of the word—the next guy who tells her she’s _intimidating_ is getting punched—and it’s not like guys are lining up to get involved in her whole situation. But she certainly hasn’t found anyone she likes enough to make the time for, either, so she’s mostly okay with it. There will be time for that later, probably.

Definitely not at a bar in Nashville. She posts up at the far end of the bar, scouting the possible options, and it doesn’t take long for a guy to come up to her.

“Hi, I’m Chris,” he says, holding his hand out. She appreciates a handshake, and she also appreciates his wavy dark hair and the way she has to tip her head up to look at him.

“Travis.”

“Wow, a girl named Travis.”

“Never heard that one before,” she says, with a smile that’s 90 percent fake, and the guy laughs.

* * *

When she gets back to the hotel, she gets off the elevator and almost runs into Nolan, who’s in sweats and slides and a thin t-shirt, holding a bucket of ice.

“That was fast.” He grins. “Sucks for you.”

Travis rolls her eyes. “The choices were not good.”

Dark-haired guy had a smile that was too sleazy, the blonde guy after him talked too much, and Travis didn’t feel like putting any more effort in after that.

“Yeah, you sure you didn’t strike out?”

“Fuck you, I don’t _strike out_.” She’s not the most stereotypically beautiful woman out there, but she’s really fit and she has a great ass, which, with a guy, is usually enough to make up for the facts that she isn’t rocking much in the boob department and could probably beat him at arm wrestling. She can pick up when she wants to, is what she’s saying.

“So you’re just picky, then,” he says.

“The bar isn’t _that_ high, your species just sucks.”

Nolan tilts his head a little in acquiescence, as if to say, _eh, fair_. “Wanna watch something?”

“Not the Netflix and chill I was hoping for, but yeah.”

“Truly honored to be your second choice, bud.”

“You should be,” Travis shoots back as she follows him into his room and heads straight for his minibar. Fuck yes, there are peanut M&Ms. She grabs them and watches Nolan tip some of the ice from the bucket into a plastic bag. “What’s wrong, why do you have ice?”

“Shoulder hurts.”

“Did you tell the trainers?” she asks as she climbs onto his bed, and he doesn’t even have to say anything, she can tell from his expression that the answer is _no_. “Dumbass.”

“It’s not a big deal,” he mumbles. He joins her on the bed and keeps shifting around, trying to use the headboard to brace the ice against the back of his shoulder, but it’s not working.

Travis sighs and bends her leg up, using her knee to hold the bag of ice in place. “Stop wiggling.”

He carefully reaches for the remote without dislodging the ice. “New Girl?”

“That’s fine.”

Travis rips open the package of M&Ms, and he cranes his neck to see. “Hey, gimme some.”

“You didn’t just have some guy call you _sweetie_, so no, these are all mine.”

Nolan smirks at the TV. “Not into pet names?”

“Not from random guys in bars.”

“You shoulda punched him.”

Travis laughs. “Can you _imagine _what would happen? If I assaulted someone and my mugshot was floating around, holy shit.”

“Philly would probably love you even more.”

“Maybe,” she admits.

“I’d come bail you out.”

“Aw,” she says, saccharine. “Thanks, baby.”

Travis throws an M&M at him and it nails him right in the cheek. “Ow,” Nolan complains, as he fishes it out of the sheets and eats it. “You are so annoying. And careful with the pet names, I’ll beat you up.”

“I could totally take you.”

“You could not.”

She probably couldn’t, but whatever. “You never know, I fight dirty.”

“I have no doubt.”

After three episodes, Travis is yawning and her knee is numb from the ice and she’s in severe danger of falling asleep right on Nolan’s bed. “Okay,” she decides, swinging off the bed. “I gotta go.”

Nolan groans. “It’s not that late. What, you have more important plans?”

“Yeah, I gotta go get myself off since I couldn’t find anyone else to do it.”

“Fine,” he mumbles.

“Later, dude, see you at breakfast.”

Travis goes down the hall to her own room and yawns again as she fumbles with the key card. She’s never had a roommate, per the CBA, but she’s more comfortable with it now that she’s on her second contract and would have her own room anyway, even if she were a guy.

She gets ready for bed, making sure to double-check her alarm, and slides her hand into her shorts as soon as she’s in between the sheets. Not to brag, but she’s pretty good at masturbating—even when she’s too tired for anything fancy, she can make herself come pretty reliably in just a few minutes. Not very many of her hookups have been great enough to dwell on afterward, unfortunately, so her spank bank is mostly vague and theoretical.

Chris, the dark-haired guy Travis talked to at the bar, was too annoying to hook up with but he was hot, though, tall and broad, so she closes her eyes and imagines being on her stomach, his chest against her back as he fucks her, his hand tight on her waist.

She comes with a harsh exhale and almost immediately yawns. Perfect—who needs sleeping pills when there are orgasms to be had.

* * *

Back in Philly, Travis wakes up from a nap with a deep ache in the pit of her stomach and a dawning sense of dread.

“No, no, no, no,” she whispers as she rolls off the couch. She tears through her toiletry bag on her dresser—yeah, she rarely unpacks all the way during the season, sue her—and curses sharply when she finds her pack of birth control pills.

Travis double-checks the date and the day of the week on her phone—it’s easy to lose track during the season, again, sue her—and throws the pack against the wall. Shit. Getting her period is certainly going to ruin the next couple days.

Travis returns to the couch to feel sorry for herself for a few hours. She has a notification from Nolan, typically monosyllabic with a text that says _sup_, and she just sends back the gif of Jess from New Girl, about wanting soft pretzels and also to murder someone.

Nolan doesn’t respond for like half an hour, and when he does it just says _it’s me_. Travis stares down at her phone, confused, and then her apartment buzzer goes off. Ugh. She’s not really in the mood to talk to anyone right now, but she gets up and buzzes him in anyway.

She throws on a hoodie and some deodorant, but that’s the extent of the effort she’s willing to make for a surprise visit. He knocks on the door, and Travis is absolutely blaming PMS for the way that her eyes well up a tiny bit when she opens it and sees that he’s holding a bag of soft pretzels from Wawa.

“Wasn’t sure if your text was literal,” he says. “Figured it couldn’t hurt.”

Travis takes the bag from him. “It was literal, actually, so this is amazing. Did you get any for yourself?”

“Very funny.”

“Oh, that wasn’t a joke, I will absolutely eat all of these.”

Nolan snatches the bag back and tsks. “Not on the diet plan, we should probably split them.”

“Fuck off,” she says, and it maybe comes out a little harsher than she intended.

“Jeez, what crawled up your ass?”

She goes into the kitchen for a bottle of water and takes a deep breath, trying to remember that murdering him would be a bad idea. He did bring her pretzels. “I am PMSing right now, and if you make _one_ fucking joke about it, I will absolutely throw you out on your ass, do not test me, I am not in the mood.”

Travis turns around, but Nolan is just standing there, looking placid and vaguely annoyed, like usual. “Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“_Okay_. You wanna play Fortnite or watch something or what?”

“TV. You pick.”

“Is this gonna be one of those times when you tell me to pick something but then veto my picks?”

“Depends on what you pick.”

Nolan picks Letterkenny, which she can live with, and as soon as he sits down on her couch, she sits at the other end and plops her feet in his lap. He rolls his eyes but doesn’t shove them off, so.

The show is a decent distraction, as are the pretzels, but her emotions are still pinging around, and after tears prick at the back of her eyes at a shot of the fucking _puppies_, Travis can’t take it anymore. She buries her face in one of the throw pillows her mom made her buy and groans. “This never happens, I’m such a fucking idiot.” God, she _hates_ this so much, hates the feeling of being out of control of her own body.

“Okay, don’t kill me for asking a dumb question.”

She turns her head just enough to give Nolan a side eye. “What?”

“You just said this never happens, but doesn’t it, uh, doesn’t it happen every month?”

Travis shakes her head. “If you take the pill, you can do it so you’re always taking the ones with the hormones or whatever, so you never actually get your period. That’s what most girls in the league do, at least during the season.”

“Oh.”

“I accidentally skipped a couple days, so yeah, I fucked up. This is the worst.” And her stomach fucking hurts. She’s no stranger to pain, but still. She took some Tylenol earlier, but she doesn’t even have a heating pad here.

“What does it feel like?”

“Huh?”

“I’m just asking.”

Travis has never really thought about it enough to put it into words. “Um. I can’t—it’s like my emotions just bounce around, and I can’t really control it. It’s stereotypical and stupid, but it’s still real. And feels like shit.” She eats another pretzel. “And, y’know, my uterus is revolting, that’s no picnic, either.”

Nolan nudges her feet off his lap, and she groans. He rolls his eyes but crawls up the couch and stretches out behind her so they’re basically spooning, his hand on her stomach. His hand is giant and warm and feels really fucking good, especially when Travis rucks up her hoodie and wiggles until he’s touching her bare skin instead. His pinky finger is only a couple of inches from her pubes, but she’s refusing to let this get awkward because it’s actually helping.

“Fuck,” she moans. “I take back every time I made fun of you for being a furnace.”

He exhales an almost-laugh, and she can feel the rush of breath over her neck. He’s a solid line of warmth behind her, all _emotionless_ probably, god what a dream.

It’s fine for a while, until, much to her horror, her breath catches in her throat a little bit. When was the last time she _cried_, holy shit. There’s definitely a distinct burning sensation behind her eyes, this is a disaster.

Travis, blinking furiously, starts inching toward the edge of the couch. “You should probably just go, I can—”

Nolan’s hand slides off her stomach, but instead of leaving her to wallow in private, he tugs on her arm, trying to turn her around.

“Pat—”

“It’s fine, just c’mere,” he says, and then her face is in his chest because he’s annoyingly strong.

“It just makes me feel like such a _girl_. Which isn’t a bad thing, I know, but I—”

She cuts herself off before she actually starts crying. Jesus, this is embarrassing. She doesn’t, like, _sob_ or anything, but she has to take careful breaths to keep from doing so, and there are definitely a few hot tears that slip out. Fuck, is it like her body has been storing up all the PMS shit and is just releasing it now? What is she even crying _about_?

Finally, Travis can take a steady breath. “God.” She swings up to a seated position and scrubs her hand over her face. “Well you’re obviously not allowed to tell anyone about this, ever.”

“I won’t.” He pats her back awkwardly, and Travis wants to die. “You wanna order dinner or something?”

She shakes her head. “No, that’s okay.” She imagines Nolan’s had enough of this, _she’s _certainly had enough of this. “I’m just gonna…go to sleep probably. Or something.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” Travis stands up and runs both hands through her hair. “Thanks, though. For the pretzels, and y’know, witnessing my emotional breakdown.”

“Anytime,” Nolan says, and she laughs.

“Yeah, right.”

She walks him out, and right as the elevator doors close, as Travis is stepping back into her apartment, Nolan sticks his hand out to keep them open. She looks up at the noise.

“Hey,” he calls out. “Are you free Saturday night?”

Travis blinks. “Yeah, I guess.” They don’t have a game, which is rare, but it’s not like she has anything else on her schedule.

“Don’t make plans.”

“Um. Okay?”

Nolan nods and waves a little before stepping back into the elevator. Travis squints at the empty hallway. They do things together a lot, whether with some of the other guys or on their own, but they’re rarely premeditated, it’s just one of them texting the other 10 minutes before they want to eat dinner or whatever.

Weird.

She decides to think about it later, when her uterus is no longer trying to forcibly remove itself from her body.

* * *

By the time Saturday evening rolls around, Travis has heard nothing from Nolan about the whole thing except one text several hours ago. _Pick you up at 8?_ She has no idea what’s going on or even what they’re doing, so she’s treating this as a normal situation until she has evidence otherwise.

Therefore, she’s putting as much thought into her appearance as usual—not _that_ much. Travis has never really taken the time to learn much about fashion or makeup, and she doesn’t like things she isn’t good at. Her closet is pretty pared-down, mostly casual stuff along with suits she has to wear for games, so she just grabs her favorite jeans and one of her few shirts that doesn’t have a logo of some kind on it. It isn’t fancy or anything, but it’s an olive green that she thinks looks pretty nice on her.

She spends 10 minutes watching some makeup tutorial on YouTube and then another 10 minutes debating whether she wants to put in that effort or not. She finally decides no, settling for her usual 90-second routine of mascara and chapstick instead. Nolan knows what she looks like.

Her hair usually just kind of hangs there, but it actually looks decent enough tonight that she doesn’t pull it back into a braid or up in a bun like usual. Sometimes she gets the urge to just cut it all off, but she likes being able to put it in a braid for games so that the guys don’t forget. When she breaks some defenseman’s ankles and takes the puck from him, she wants him to be able to tell that she’s a girl as she’s skating away.

It’s almost 8, so Travis digs out her one pair of booties that are actually comfortable and grabs her trusty leather jacket—it’s Saint Laurent and cost a fucking fortune, but she loves it more than most things she owns.

She finds Nolan parked downstairs, in front of her building, and walking toward the front door, oddly.

“Hey,” she calls out, and he looks up.

“Hi.” He makes an aborted gesture and turns around, going back to his car. “I would’ve—never mind.”

“You weirdo,” she says as she gets in the car.

“You look nice.”

Travis looks down at herself. “This is how I always look.” She made sure of that.

“Yeah, well.”

Nolan’s looking over his left shoulder, waiting to pull out onto the road, so she can’t even see his face.

Travis still doesn’t know where they’re going, so as Nolan drives, she makes guess after guess. “Laser tag? Paintball? That would be fun, but if you get paint on this jacket I’ll murder you. I’m not really dressed for, like, rock climbing. I could maybe handle mini golf.”

Nolan parks in some lot downtown and is smiling as he turns off the car and undoes his seatbelt. “No sports.”

“Well that’s no fun.”

Nolan blinks when she stands next to him and looks at her, his eyes catching on her feet. “You’re taller than usual.”

“Just pretend I’m on skates.”

“Yeah but when you’re wearing skates, so am I.”

“Guess we need to get you some heels then.”

The corner of his mouth quirks up, and she feels the familiar little rush of pride. “Come on,” he says, starting off down the street.

“Seriously, though, where are we going? Dude, we can’t like, go to a nice restaurant on a Saturday night by ourselves, people will see us and they’ll think we’re dating or whatever, and then it’ll be a whole—”

“It won’t look like we’re on a date, don’t worry,” he says over his shoulder.

“Why are you so fucking weird,” she mutters under her breath as she trots after him.

He takes her to a bar that’s also an arcade, which is awesome—and also probably less than ideal for two pathologically competitive people, but whatever. She flat-out murders him at air hockey, which brings her more joy than it probably should, but he swiftly returns the favor at Ms. Pac-Man.

Travis drowns her sorrows in tacos, which are delicious, even more so because she makes Nolan pay for them. He grumbles about it a little but doesn’t _actually_ complain, especially when she points out that this whole thing was his idea.

They mess around with some of the classic games, Donkey Kong and Space Invaders, but when Travis starts to wince at the flashing lights, she puts her hands on Nolan’s chest and shoves him in the direction of the door. “We gotta go.”

Nolan takes a step back and brings his hand up to encircle one of her wrists. “What, why?”

“Because it’s loud in here, and the lights are weird, and we’ve been here for a while. That’s probably not good for your head, so let’s go.”

A little smile dawns on his face, and Travis looks away. “I’m fine, I swear.”

Her hands are still on his chest, so she pushes again. Annoyingly, he doesn’t budge. “Still. I want dessert anyway, let’s go somewhere else.”

“Okay.” His hand on her wrist slides down, tangling their fingers together and using the grip to tug her through the crowd and toward the door. He lets go as soon as they’re outside, and Travis flexes her fingers. “Where do you wanna go?”

“Huh?”

“For dessert.”

“Oh. I have no idea.”

They wander down the street, looking at menus, until Travis stops short at one.

“Oh my god, Pat, they have _smores_. We gotta go here.”

She drags him inside and flashes a smile at the hostess. “Hi, could we have a table for just dessert?”

The hostess grimaces a little and looks over her shoulder. “We’re actually full inside right now, but we have some tables out on the back patio. We have heaters, it’s not too bad out there.”

Travis turns back to Nolan, who’s looking right at her and doesn’t even bother looking away when she catches him. “That okay?”

“Fine with me.”

It’s probably better, actually, because there are fewer people to see them. It’s chilly, but the table the hostess leads them to is right next to a heater and Nolan slides into the bench seat next to her.

Travis doesn’t even have to look at the menu, she just asks for the s’mores as soon as the waiter comes by.

“Are you gonna let me have some?” Nolan asks.

“If you’re nice to me, maybe.”

“I’m always nice to you.”

“LOL,” she says, and he frowns.

“You can’t just _say_ LOL.”

“Lolz.” Travis tries to keep as straight a face as possible, and he rolls his eyes. Then she’s distracted when the s’mores come, and her eyes widen. “Holy shit. I did not know this was like, a DIY type situation.”

“What, you thought they came pre-assembled?”

“I didn’t really think about it! I just saw s’mores and got excited.” There’s fire and everything. “This is cool. You gonna let me roast your marshmallow?”

Nolan snorts and skewers his own marshmallow. “Uh, no. You probably like them burnt.”

“That’s the best way!”

“Gross.”

“Not gross,” she says around a mouthful, once the marshmallow is sufficiently charred. “Delicious.”

She eats more s’mores than is probably advisable, but no regrets. Nolan reaches past her for the bill, and as Travis takes a pleasant inhale of his warm cologne, it hits her.

“Holy shit, this is a date,” she says. He wanted to _come to her door_, he paid for her dinner without real complaint, he held her hand…she is so dumb. “Oh my god. That’s your fancy cologne, this is totally a date. What the fuck, Patty.”

Nolan’s cheeks are getting pinker by the second. He concentrates very hard on taking out his wallet and putting some cash into the little bill folder.

“I thought that was obvious,” he mumbles.

“And how exactly did you make it _obvious_?”

“You knew,” Nolan says, which is not an answer to her question.

“Um, I did not know, actually.”

He reaches over and flips the ends of her hair. “You aren’t wearing a hat.”

“So?”

“So you always wear a hat. And you complain when you can’t. Didn’t hear any complaining.”

“You aren’t wearing a hat, either.”

“Yeah, cause I knew this was a date,” he says, and Travis doesn’t really know what to say to that.

Nolan stands up, and for half a second Travis thinks he’s going to leave her here because she called him out, but no, he just slides the bill folder to the end of the table and kind of turns toward her, waiting. She scrambles to her feet and follows him through the restaurant, her brain racing.

It hasn’t, like, _escaped her notice_ that Nolan is attractive. But teammates have been thoroughly and completely off-limits in her brain for as long as she can remember, so she’s literally never even thought about it.

He’s a grumpy weirdo, but he’s her best friend, has been practically since he walked into the Flyers locker room for the first time. He never treated her any differently or acted weird around her, even though she knows he’d never had a girl teammate before. They argue a lot and don’t always get along, but they always get over it and making him laugh is like, her favorite thing ever.

Oh, fuck.

Travis doesn’t know what to do. In general, yeah, but also right this fucking minute, when Nolan is starting to get the particularly bitchy look that means he’s exceeded his daily allotment of emotions. It’s not exactly a large allotment to begin with, and he basically just told her he…likes her? Wants to stealth date her? Shit.

Travis can’t, like, _hold his hand _or anything, they’re in the middle of downtown Philadelphia. She settles for bumping her elbow against his arm. “Hey, you remember when we went there?” she says, pointing to the bar across the street as they walk back to his car. “Your rookie year.”

“Barely,” Nolan says, and she laughs.

“Simmer kept sneaking you drinks, you were so drunk.”

“What were we celebrating? Me getting my housing letter?”

“Yeah. You bet G $500 that you could beat him in darts.”

“No way,” he says, but the corner of his mouth is twitching up, like he wants to laugh. “That’s not true.”

“He obliterated you, obviously. I bet him that _I _could beat him, which I did, so I got your money back, and you very loudly told the entire bar that I was your favorite person in the world.”

They’re back at Nolan’s car, and he looks over at her. “I definitely did not do that.”

“Okay, that very last part I made up,” she admits as she opens the door before he can, like, do it for her. “But the rest happened. That was the first time I saw you really drunk.”

“That’s embarrassing,” Nolan mumbles.

“Nah.” They were still getting to know each other then, and all she really remembers is a big, wide-eyed kid who seemed stressed and a weird impulse to make sure he was okay.

Travis connects her phone first and puts on a playlist that she knows will make Nolan roll his eyes. Which he does, right on cue, but he doesn’t turn it off, so that’s tacit approval in her book.

“I remember the first time I saw you drunk,” he says suddenly, and she glances over at him. He’s looking carefully at the road, hands at ten-and-two and everything.

“Really?”

Nolan nods. “We were on the road. Washington, I think.”

“And what embarrassing shit did I do?”

“I remember thinking, there’s no way she can get louder than she usually is.” He’s still not looking at her, but there’s an expression on his face that could possibly, plausibly be a smile.

“But you were wrong.”

“But I was wrong. You made me do a shot with you, and you were wearing, like, this red—”

He instantly clams up, like he realized half a second too late he said too much, and Travis feels frozen in her seat. There aren’t many streetlights on the stretch of road they’re on, and she can’t quite see his face.

Then the song changes, to one she knows he particularly hates, and Nolan groans. “I can’t believe you listen to this shit,” he says, and Travis grins. Maybe things will be okay if he can still bitch about her music tastes.

“Hey, don’t insult the music of my people.”

“Who, hicks?”

“Well, not all of us can grow up in the thriving culture capital of fuckin’ Manitoba,” she drawls, and he rolls his eyes again. She reaches for her phone. “Maybe you’ll like this one better. _IIIIII hate love songs_.”

Nolan reaches out blindly and tries to put his hand over her mouth. “You’re making it worse,” he says, which she unfortunately agrees with—she has an awful voice. “What happened to the rule about driver picking the music?”

“You let me, that’s what happened.”

He shakes his head. “Can’t take you anywhere.”

“Give me an inch, I’ll take a mile,” she agrees. “Or so said every elementary school teacher I ever had.”

“God, you must have been a _terror_,” Nolan says, but he sounds kind of awed.

“I was a fucking delight, I’ll have you know.”

“Good to know nothing has changed,” he says, and she almost feels flattered until— “The terror part, I mean.”

He’s smirking, and she smacks him on the arm.

He parks right in front of her building and turns the car off. Travis swallows. “You can’t park here, I think this is a loading zone or something.”

“It’ll just be a minute,” Nolan says dismissively as he flicks his flashers on.

She gets out of the car and goes inside, Nolan right on her heels. Mrs. Peters from her floor is already in the elevator, and Travis waves at her. They always make small talk in the hallway, and she sometimes lets Travis walk her dog; they’re basically besties.

“Evening, dear.”

“Hi, how are you?”

“Good, thank you.” She looks up at Nolan. “That was a very nice goal against Columbus. You should go to the net more often.”

“Oh,” he says, surprised. “Um, thank you.”

Travis bites back a smile. “Mrs. Peters is a big fan.”

“Travis is my favorite, though, sorry, dear.”

“That’s okay,” Nolan reassures her. “She’s my favorite, too.”

_Oh my god_, Travis mouths behind Mrs. Peters’s back, making a disgusted face at him.

“Such a nice young man,” Mrs. Peters says, patting Nolan on the arm as he ushers her out of the elevator first, and he smirks at Travis, completely full of shit. She rolls her eyes.

Then they’re in front of her door.

Mrs. Peters is digging through her bag for her keys only about eight feet from them, and Travis suddenly feels unbearably awkward. And she doesn’t really _do_ awkward, this sucks. How do they usually say goodbye? Well, Nolan doesn’t usually walk her to her fucking door.

“Thanks,” she says quietly. “For dinner.”

She gives him a pat in the general shoulder-chest area and immediately regrets it. But he smiles, a small one. “Thanks for coming. And sharing your dessert.”

“Always,” Travis says, and he snorts a little as he heads back toward the elevator. “Hope you didn’t get a ticket!” she calls after him.

“I’ll venmo you for half if I do,” he yells back, and Travis double-checks that Mrs. Peters is safely inside her apartment before flipping him off.

She doesn’t know what to do with herself, so she mechanically gets ready for bed. Sleep doesn’t come, surprise, probably because Travis is frantically replaying all of the recent interactions she’s had with Nolan.

_This is probably a terrible idea_, she tells herself. It’s _Nolan_, it’s her _teammate_, she can think of half a dozen reasons just off the top of her head why this is emphatically, objectively a bad idea.

But she also thinks about the way Nolan brought her soft pretzels last week, the way he always lets her sleep on his shoulder on the plane, the way he looks without his shirt on. Travis is very good at setting her own boundaries—exhibit A: no teammates, ever—and now this one seems to have been breached. Fuck. She groans and flips her pillow over, flopping down onto her other side. Normally she just rubs one out when she can’t sleep, but she’s a little scared to do that right now.

Nolan texts her about half an hour later, while she’s still staring at the ceiling, and she jumps when her phone vibrates on her nightstand.

_was that weird_

Travis wants to respond YES WHAT THE FUCK, all caps necessary, but this is a situation that feels like it deserves a delicate touch. Unfortunate that delicate isn’t really her thing.

_weird doesn’t have to be bad, _she says instead, after gnawing on her lip and thinking about it for like three minutes. Nolan immediately sends back an eyes emoji, and she puts her phone facedown on her nightstand with an embarrassed groan.


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, Travis is still in bed, trying to catch up on her texts while contemplating what to scrounge together for breakfast, when her apartment buzzer goes off.

She groans, debating whether to ignore it or not—who the fuck could that be on a Sunday morning—but eventually rolls out of bed and goes to the door. “Yeah?”

“Hey.” Nolan’s dumb voice crackles through the speaker. “I brought breakfast.”

Travis leans her forehead against the door, resolutely ignoring the way her heart jumps. She’s wearing last night’s mascara, her hair looks like she just rolled out of bed—not in an artful, Instagram model kind of way, either—and she’s pretty sure that shorts and a threadbare Flyers tee don’t count as like, sexy pajamas.

Whatever. She buzzes him up.

Her traitorous heart thumps again when she answers the door. He does have breakfast and even coffee, and he’s wearing that dumb gray toque that makes his eyes look nice, and he fucking _smiles_ at her.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

Travis unsuccessfully bites back her own smile and takes one of the coffee cups out of the tray. She takes a sip and makes a face. “Ugh. Learn to love yourself, Pattycakes, put some fucking cream in your coffee.”

He rolls his eyes and points her a different cup. “That one’s yours.”

“You wanna sit down?” Travis slides onto one the stools at her breakfast bar, kicking out the other one with her foot, but Nolan’s still standing.

“Delivery only, sorry.”

She takes the brown bag from Nolan’s hand and peeks inside. Breakfast sandwiches from their favorite place, score. “So what did I do to deserve breakfast delivery?”

“Well.” He is _blushing_. This is fascinating. “Might send flowers after a date or whatever, but I thought you’d prefer breakfast.”

“Everyone likes flowers. But I’m not gonna turn down breakfast.” Travis unwraps her sandwich and hums. “_Was_ it a date, though?”

“I told you that it was.”

“Yeah but you didn’t kiss me after so I wasn’t actually sure.”

“I didn’t know you wanted me to.”

Travis takes a giant bite of her sandwich and swallows most of it before she responds. “Well, Mrs. Peters probably has a robust Twitter following, you don’t know.”

Nolan laughs, actually full-on laughs, and Travis is about two seconds from just planting one on him, regardless of the onions on her breakfast sandwich and the fact that she hasn’t brushed her teeth yet this morning, when his phone buzzes.

Once Nolan realizes it’s a call and not a text, he pulls it out of his pocket and makes a face before he answers it. Kevin’s voice, asking where he is, is loud enough that Travis can hear him.

“I’m on my way back. There was a line at the place. And I had to stop and get gas,” he adds awkwardly, shrugging at Travis, and she stifles a laugh. Kevin starts to say something else, but Nolan hangs up on him. “I gotta go. He’s gonna be pissed that his sandwich is cold.”

Travis laughs. “Even better.” She starts to get up, but Nolan puts a heavy hand on her shoulder. It’s warm through her thin t-shirt.

“I’ll let myself out. See you tonight, or this afternoon, I guess.”

“Yep.” They have one of those strange early evening Sunday games, which aren’t her favorite. “Thank you, for this.”

“Course.”

He waves, then he’s gone, and Travis is left staring at her coffee and her half-eaten sandwich. Fuck.

* * *

They lose, which always puts Travis in a bad mood, to the _Red Wings_, which makes her mood worse. She’s not particularly excited for the pre-planned team dinner happening afterward, but she’s pretty sure it’s mandatory—or would warrant a disappointed look from Claude if she bailed, so…same thing.

Nolan sits across from her, a couple seats down, and offers her a nod as if things are normal, as if he wasn’t in her apartment 12 hours ago delivering a post-date breakfast. Which is at least one good thing from today. Not the breakfast itself—though that counts, too, she supposes—but that everything felt normal between them during the game.

Travis never, ever imagined herself as someone who would date a teammate, and if that’s going to happen, she needs to know that everything else is going to stay the same, team-wise. She doesn’t like proving people _right_, especially all those people who thought, and continue to think, that adding women to the NHL will ruin team dynamics everywhere.

“Patty!” Kevin bellows from the end of the table, effectively cutting off everyone else’s conversation. He points with his fork toward the bar on the other side of the restaurant. “Nobody look, but that blonde chick over there keeps checking you out.”

Everyone looks, because they’re all awful, and Nolan groans. “Fuck off.”

“I’m not kidding! You should go for it. When was the last time you got laid, bud, seriously? It’s been forever.”

“How long’s it been?” someone calls out, and Nolan’s got his pissy look on.

“Not that long, Jesus.”

That inspires a conversation as to who’s riding the longest dry spell, which Travis participates in without giving too much away because she’s private, thanks very much. But inside she’s kind of seething. If Nolan just wants to fuck, when he has countless other options that _wouldn’t_ end in her risking her entire reputation, she’s going to murder him.

She doesn’t want to have any kind of conversation about it tonight, though, because she’s already in a bad mood and is self-aware enough to know that it wouldn’t end well, so she just slips out with the first wave of guys who want to get home to their families.

Nolan texts before Travis even gets home, but she doesn’t check it until she’s in bed: _hey where’d you go. _She’s not actually a passive aggressive person and has no desire to leave him on read or anything, so she just texts back _pissed from the game, wanted to go home, see you tomorrow _and goes the fuck to sleep.

* * *

They have a back-to-back and therefore the morning skate is optional, but Travis shows up and so does Nolan, who makes no secret of wanting to talk to her. Travis keeps dodging him since she really doesn’t want to have this conversation at the rink. This isn’t exactly something she wants anyone else to overhear, for one, and it’s not like there’s any private place for them to go with all these nosy assholes around.

Even when they’re in line waiting for drills, Nolan nudges her. “Hey. What’s—”

“Later.”

“Teeks, c’mon.”

“Not here.”

“But—”

“No.” She whirls around and shoves him, trying to keep her voice down. “I said I didn’t wanna talk about right now, I wasn’t fucking kidding.”

Kevin skates by them, clucking his tongue. “Careful, boys, the marrieds are fighting again.”

“Fuck off,” she snaps. He backs off, hands raised in a faux-innocent gesture, and thankfully Nolan does, too.

After practice, Travis ditches her helmet and grabs a bucket of pucks. A few guys are working with the skills coach at one end, so she heads toward the other end and gives Nolan a meaningful head tilt until he follows her. No one will be able to hear what they say, and it’ll look a lot less suspicious than her dragging him into a trainer’s room or something.

She dumps out a few pucks and sends one right onto Nolan’s tape, but he isn’t expecting it and flubs the one-timer.

“Yikes, embarrassing.”

“Shut up, gimme another one.”

She does, and he promptly buries it. After a few more, Travis props her chin on her stick. “When I was 14, on my bantam team, on the very first fucking day, my coach said he was okay with having a girl but I wasn’t allowed to use the team as my dating pool. Said it in front of everyone.”

Nolan has the courtesy to wince. “Jesus.”

“Yeah. I get shit like that all the time, still, as if I do this every day just for what, a chance to date one of you assholes? Gross.” She scrapes her hair back from her face, what’s fallen out of her braid. “The boys were teasing you last night, that you hadn’t gotten laid in forever. Is that what this is? I’m around and I’m an easy option or whatever? Because you can hook up with whoever you want, bud, but it can’t be me. I’ve never done the fuck buddy thing with a teammate, and I’m not gonna start, there’s no way that’s worth the shit it will bring.”

“Teeks.” He sighs and looks like he’d rather be anywhere else right now, which means he’s dealing with _feelings_ he doesn’t really want to express. Travis is intimately familiar with the expression. “No.”

“No? No, what?”

“That’s not it, at all.”

“Then what is it?”

Nolan shakes his head with a huff and smiles, but there’s no humor in it. “I’ve been obsessed with you since, like, day one.”

“You—what? Holy shit, you hid it really well.” Travis laughs a little, dumbfounded, because she can’t help it, and Nolan’s smile cracks into something slightly more real.

“I tried really hard.”

She smacks him across the shins with her stick. “Why’d you never…” Travis trails off and swallows. The _whole time_, what the fuck. She doesn’t know what to do with herself right now. “Why’d you never say anything?”

“I didn’t wanna be _that guy_. And G gives this speech, and we were friends, and it just—seemed like a bad idea.”

“And now all of a sudden it seems like a _good_ idea?” she says, but she’s smiling and he gives her a small one in response.

“I dunno. Probably not. But we—I’m not an asshole. You can say no, things can go back to how they were before. Or not, if you, y’know, don’t wanna be friends anymore or whatever.”

“That’ll never happen,” Travis says automatically. “It was just really—out of the blue. For me. I was confused.”

“It wasn’t for me.” Nolan clears his throat. “Sorry that wasn’t clear.”

“Sorry I acted like an asshole.”

“You didn’t.”

“So why—why now?”

Nolan shrugs. He isn’t really looking at her. “I dunno. It wasn’t, like, going away like I thought it might, I was tired of, uh, not dealing with it or whatever.”

“You coulda just asked.” Travis lowers her voice and does her best impression of him. “Teeks, you wanna go on a date with me?”

“I don’t sound like that. And it’s not, like—that easy.”

“Sure it is. Patty, you wanna go on a date with me?”

He looks up at that, right at her. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she says. It’s stupid, probably, but…whatever. Travis does a lot of things—or doesn’t do a lot of things—because she _should_, she might as well do something just because she fucking wants to.

“Cool.”

“Cool,” she mocks, and he shoves at her. She glides backward, laughing. “Tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Nolan says, then poke-checks the puck off her stick and fires it into the net. “More one-timers, c’mon.”

Travis rolls her eyes but goes back to her pile of pucks.

* * *

After practice, Travis stops for a smoothie at her favorite place, and on her way out, she pauses as she walks past the florist next door she’s never noticed before.

She goes in, just to check it out, and ends up lingering by a nice little potted plant. She knows exactly nothing about decorative plants, but there are pretty white flowers on it and it’s not exactly over-the-top. Travis winces a little at the price—flowers are fucking expensive, who knew—but hands over her Visa and asks if she can include a card. _This is a date fyi_, she prints carefully on it and arranges for it to be delivered tomorrow afternoon.

* * *

Travis texts Nolan when she’s sitting outside—she’s _not_ going to the door and coming up with some kind of cover story for Kevin. He comes outside just a minute later, and he objectively doesn’t look any different, just wearing jeans and a shirt like Travis has seen a thousand times, but now it’s making her stomach feel all fluttery and strange.

“Thanks for clarifying that this is a date,” Nolan says as he gets in the car, and she can’t hold back a grin.

“Well, I’m wearing a hat, so I wouldn’t want you to get confused.”

“You’re supposed to send the flowers _after _the date, though.”

Travis shakes her head. “Damn, screwing everything up already.”

“I’ll let it go.”

She doesn’t really know how to plan a _date_-date with, like, activities, so she just drives to a bar she knows they both like that has pretty decent food.

It’s strangely crowded, though, for a weeknight, and they have to squeeze into the last two seats at the end of the bar, with Travis nearly pressed against the wall. “You good?” Nolan asks lowly, leaning over unnecessarily, given how their shoulders are basically touching and her knee knocks into his every time she moves.

Travis normally wouldn’t give any of that a second thought, but now it feels like her entire brain is fixated on all the places their bodies are touching. God, this is weird.

“Yeah,” she says belatedly, and he lifts an eyebrow at her. Before he can say anything, though, the bartender comes over and drops a menu in front of them. She points toward the other end of the bar.

“Trivia is about to start, if you guys wanted to play.”

“Oh! Thanks.” That explains the crowd. Travis turns to Nolan, trying to ignore the way her elbow brushes his arm. “You wanna play?”

“Two people who barely finished high school? Sounds like a dream team to me,” he says, and she laughs.

They play along casually without actually submitting their answers, which is good because they’re fairly terrible—there aren’t enough hockey questions. Nolan’s hand lands on her thigh halfway through their meal, making her jump. He jerks away, and Travis fumbles for his hand, putting it back on her thigh.

“No, you’re fine. Sorry.”

He gives her a little side eye and keeps eating his burger. “You’re being weird.”

“_This_ is weird,” she hisses, gesturing at their entire situation. “Not…I mean, like I said before, weird isn’t bad.”

“Yeah, but weird doesn’t exactly mean _good_, either.” His face looks kind of pinched, and Travis blows out a breath.

“C’mon, you know me, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t wanna be. My brain is just—taking some time to catch up.”

She puts her hand back on Nolan’s, tangling their fingers together. “You’re so weird,” he says, but it’s fond, she’s pretty sure.

“I’ll pay for your dinner,” she offers.

“Oh, obviously.”

Travis forces herself to relax after that. It’s just _Nolan_, she’s had dinner with him dozens of times. Not while they’re holding hands under the table, sure, but it’s certainly not a bad addition.

She pays, as promised, and Nolan keeps a light hand on her back as they pick their way out of the crowded bar. Once they’re outside, he crowds her against the driver’s side door of her car, and Travis has to tip her head back to look at him. She sneaks a look to the side—they’re in a parking lot, but the street is right there, where people are walking by, and in contrast, her car windows are pretty tinted.

“Get in the car,” she says, and she’s surprised by how serious her own voice sounds. He looks at her for a second, then the smallest of smirks appears at the corner of his mouth and he obediently steps back.

As soon as Travis gets in the car and closes the door, she takes a deep breath and grabs Nolan by the elbow. He kisses her, and it’s softer than she probably would have guessed, sweeter. His hand feels giant on her face, his thumb on her cheekbone, and she gets her fingers in his hair to make the angle better. It gets hotter then, and deeper, and Travis is thinking wildly that they could have been doing this for _years_. God, they’re dumb.

Eventually she has to breathe, but Nolan doesn’t go far, leaving his forehead against her. “Fuck,” he breathes, and she doesn’t really have anything else to add to that so she just kisses him again. Nolan’s hand slides around to the back of her head, holding her steady and knocking her hat off in the process, and she gets one knee underneath herself so she can twist closer and reach for him across the console.

Eventually Travis pulls back because she’s about three seconds from pulling him into the backseat, and there are only so many objectively bad decisions she can make in one evening.

“Okay,” she says nonsensically, patting him on the chest. “That’s—yeah. Let’s go.”

Nolan’s smiling now, though, and that’s like her favorite thing so she darts forward for one more kiss before settling back into her seat.

“Your hat hair is awful,” he says.

Travis laughs and reaches down into the footwell where it fell. She runs both hands through her hair before resettling the hat. “Such a charmer.”

She turns the car on and has to shake her head to clear it before she actually puts it into gear. Nolan’s hand wanders while she’s driving, trailing down her thigh, and after several blocks, she has to bat it away. “Stop distracting me, I’m driving.”

“Sorry,” he says, sounding the furthest thing from it.

He keeps his hands to himself for the rest of the drive, and as she approaches their place, Travis rolls to a stop and squints. “Is that—”

Nolan sighs and rolls down his window. “Kev?”

“Hey!” he calls out, his face lighting up. “What’s up, dudes? Where you been?”

“What are you doing out here?” Nolan asks, ignoring Kevin’s question, and he lifts the plastic bag he’s holding.

“I really wanted ice cream, so I walked to that little convenience store.” He sticks his head in the window. “Thanks for having him back by curfew, Teeks. Game tomorrow, y’know.”

“Oh my god,” Nolan mutters. He opens his door without warning, making Kevin stumble back.

“Bye, Patty,” Travis calls out. “Bye, Patty’s dad.”

Kevin flips her off blindly, already heading inside, and Nolan gives her a pained look over his shoulder. Travis laughs, even though she would really have appreciated a good night kiss, thanks a fucking lot Kevin, and has to lean her forehead against the steering wheel for a minute before she can drive home.

* * *

Travis doesn’t normally mind the constant travel routine, but it feels like a goddamn luxury to have an entire week in Philly. She and Nolan are trying to squeeze in a dinner before they leave tomorrow for a two-game road trip, but she’s still getting dressed when her phone vibrates against her dresser.

Kevin’s dumb face looks up at her from the screen. It’s a FaceTime call, but she taps audio only since she’s not currently wearing a shirt. “Hey Kev, what’s up?”

“Heyyy Teeks. Patty said you guys were gonna grab dinner, but he’s not doing so hot so he asked me to call you.”

“Oh, shit. Migraine?”

“Yeah. It’s not super bad, but he’s not feeling great.”

She bites at her thumb. “I’m on my way already,” she lies. “Can I just come over anyway to hang out? Or is he feeling too bad?”

“I would say probably yes, but lemme ask him and I’ll text you.”

“Thanks, buddy.”

Travis pulls on a more casual shirt than she was originally planning and leaves, detouring toward the place with the bougie açaí bowls that she makes fun of Nolan for liking. He isn’t usually hungry when he has a migraine, but sometimes he wants a smoothie or something and this seems close enough. Worst case, she can just drop it off, but while she’s waiting in line, Kevin texts her a thumbs up. That’s a green light, she figures, so she spends 60 fucking dollars on three açaí bowls and heads over to their place.

Kevin answers when she rings the bell, and his eyes light up when he notices the bag in her hand. “Food! Score, thanks bud.”

“Don’t get too excited til you see what’s in there.”

He takes the bag from her, and she wanders into the dark living room. Nolan’s on the couch, cocooned in a mountain of blankets, and Travis must make some sort of face because he sighs. “It’s not that bad. Like, relatively.”

She sits on the other end of the couch and pokes at Nolan’s calf. “Are you hungry? I brought food.”

He scrunches up his nose. “Not really. What kinda food?”

“Those açaí bowls you like.”

“Really?” he asks, peeking out a little more from his blanket pile, and she nods.

“This is actually not bad,” Kevin says as he comes in and sits in the armchair, his mouth full of coconut and granola and whatever else the fuck they put on those things.

“They’re good!” Nolan exclaims, and Travis makes a _so-so_ motion with her hand.

“You want yours?” she asks, and he hesitates.

“Not right now.”

“So, Teeks,” Kevin starts. “What are your thoughts on Monopoly?”

“Like, the board game?” she asks, confused, and Nolan groans.

“He found it last week, forgot he had it, and has been begging me to play.”

“I will abso_lutely_ crush you at Monopoly, let’s go,” Travis says, and Kevin laughs.

“Oh, you are so on. Patty, you wanna play?”

He shakes his head, and as Kevin gets the game set up on the coffee table, Travis slides to the floor, her back against the couch. “He can be on my team.”

They play, and Nolan offers far more biting commentary and criticism of her choices than actual help. He also ends up eating about half of her açaí bowl, snatching bites whenever she puts it down to play her turn.

All in all, it isn’t actually that different from the other times she hung out with Nolan when he wasn’t feeling well, when she and Kevin would occupy themselves with something screen-free and relatively quiet that they could do with Nolan nearby, even if he didn’t actually participate. They played a lot of cards that year.

Travis doesn’t exactly remember how the game of Monopoly is actually supposed to end, but as Kevin builds what feels like an unsurmountable lead, she throws in the towel before she flips the game board over or something.

“Yikes, you’re _quitting_?” Nolan says, dry, and Travis glares over her shoulder at him.

“You are the worst backseat Monopoly driver I’ve ever met. Next time you’re on Kev’s team.”

“Happy to have you, bud,” Kevin says graciously.

He goes up to his room after his victory, and Travis waits about three minutes, just to be safe, before getting up and stretching out next to Nolan on the couch. He lifts up the blanket to let her underneath and immediately squirms down until his head is on her shoulder.

He says something against her skin, and she leans back. “What?”

“What if they’re back,” he mumbles. “The migraines.”

“They’re not,” Travis says automatically. She slides a hand into his hair and scratches, and she has to hold back a smile as he leans into it like a cat. “You get one every once in a while, yeah?”

Nolan nods. “Yeah. Just…”

“They’re not coming back,” she says firmly. “Don’t stress about it until you know there’s actually something to stress about. And if they ever do, we’ll deal with it.”

Travis keeps scratching his head, and her eye catches on the flowering plant she got for him, sitting on an end table in the corner of the living room. “What did you tell Kev about that plant?” she asks, and he smiles.

“Just that I thought our place needed some sprucing up. I think he thinks I’m into plants now or something, he keeps asking me questions about other ones he should get.”

Travis laughs. Nolan yawns, his eyes falling closed, and she tugs on his hair, as gently as she can. “You should go to bed.”

“Will you stay?”

It’s probably risky, with Kevin and all, but— “Sure.”

He’s kind of woozy, from whatever meds he took, but with her help he manages to get off the couch, upstairs, and into his own bed.

Nolan’s eyes are barely open, but she can feel him watching her as she takes off her jeans and flannel and digs through his drawers for a t-shirt to put on.

“This is unfair,” he mumbles, mostly into his pillow. “I feel like shit.”

She holds back a laugh and takes off her bra from under the t-shirt. “Do you want me to put more clothes on?”

“No.”

Travis climbs onto the bed, and he immediately wraps an arm around her waist, pulling her close. “Thanks for coming over,” he says into her neck. “Sorry we couldn’t go out.”

“Don’t apologize, I don’t care what we do.”

Nolan’s hand is under her shirt, warm and big, slowly tracing over her skin. His thumb slides up over her ribs, and Travis holds her breath as he maps out the lower curve of her breast. After a minute she can’t resist, twisting to press her lips against his cheek and then his mouth.

He kisses back, eager, and drags her closer, until she can throw a leg over his hips. Travis gets her own hand under his shirt and explores the breadth of his torso, but he eventually pulls away with a little hiss.

“I can’t, I’m sorry.”

Travis catches her breath and scoots back, shaking her head. “Stop apologizing, I started it.”

“Couldn’t resist, huh?”

He’s smirking, even though she can only see about half of it, and she flips over onto her stomach with a huff.

“All right, you and your ego can fuck all the way off. Go to sleep,” she orders.

* * *

Travis wakes up the next morning trapped under several heavy limbs.

“Fucking barnacle,” she says under her breath while she manages to worm her way out of Nolan’s grasp without waking him up.

She changes back into her clothes and holds her breath as she pokes her head out the door. It’s quiet, thankfully, and Kevin isn’t like, lurking in the hallway. The kitchen is just as quiet, so she puts some coffee on and starts poking through their fridge.

Kevin comes in first and stops short, making a shocked face. “Can you be trusted in the kitchen?”

“Shut up. I can make, like, eggs.”

“Thanks.” He pours himself a cup of coffee, and she watches as his eyes stray toward the giant mound of blankets on the couch. “We have guest rooms, you didn’t have to sleep on the couch.”

“It’s fine, I was comfy,” she says, keeping her gaze on the pan in front of her. It isn’t technically a lie.

Kevin sticks a few slices of bread into the toaster, and Nolan wanders in when the eggs are almost done.

“How ya feelin’, bud?” Kevin asks.

Nolan yawns. “Why’d you let Teeks near a stove?”

Kevin laughs, and Travis points the spatula at Nolan. “I’m being nice, shut up or you don’t get eggs.”

He crowds behind her and looks over her shoulder. He’s a little closer than strictly necessary, and Travis forces herself to stay still. “Do I want those eggs?”

“Yes! I know how to make this, at least.” She put cheese in them and everything, and even some spinach she found in their fridge. “Head all better?”

“Yep,” Nolan says shortly.

“So make yourself useful and go make me a cup of coffee.”

“Magic word.”

“The magic word is, I just made you breakfast.”

He smiles, which is a sight that’s always made her happy, but the fervent urge to kiss it right off his fucking face is certainly new.

* * *

Travis has been in the NHL for several years now, and yet somehow she has never noticed how _fucking_ little alone time they actually get during road trips. Was it always like this? She swears she remembers being _bored_ on the road as a rookie. She’d kill to be bored because that means she’d have time to hook up with her…whatever Nolan is.

They sneak out for dinner the first night in Chicago because it’s such a big city that no one really cares who the fuck they are. It’s nice, being able to hold his hand on the street, like she would never in Philly, and just as Travis thinks it’s about to get a hell of a lot nicer back at the hotel, they get intercepted in the hallway and roped into team movie night. Being squeezed into a bed next to Nolan with his arm over her shoulders—literally just for space-saving purposes—would be ideal, if it weren’t for the crowd of other guys on her other side.

The next day it’s team breakfast and morning skate, then someone has a lunch place that they just _have_ to go to, and then it’s pre-game nap time. And Travis is not interrupting the sanctity of a pre-game nap for sex, no matter how hard up she is. And she’s pretty hard up.

On the bus to the United Center, Nolan hops on at the last minute and elbows her as he sits down. “Fuck off,” she says, without opening her eyes. “I’m meditating.”

“I can hear your music.”

“Maybe I meditate to Beyonce, so what.”

“I forgot to charge my AirPods, can I have one of yours?”

“Fine,” she says, opening one eye and handing him one. “But no complaining, you’re listening to my music.”

He doesn’t, the entire way to the arena, until he leans over. “Is this the same song on repeat?” he whispers.

“This is a different remix. Shhh.”

While they’re waiting in the tunnel, Travis smacks Nolan with her stick, like normal, and he mouths _flawless_ at her.

“Shut up,” she says out loud, and he laughs. “You better hope you don’t have a good game, otherwise you’re stuck listening to that before games forever.”

Nolan does, though, unfortunately for him, with a goal and two assists. They still lose, and Travis gets the butt end of a stick in her back, which hurts like a motherfucker and means she spends the short flight to St. Louis lying across an empty row on her stomach with an ice pack strapped on.

There’s a team dinner the next night, but finally, _finally_, she sneaks over to Nolan’s room afterward and no one interrupts her in the hallway, the fire alarm doesn’t go off, nothing. He opens the door about a quarter of a second after she knocks and tugs her inside by the wrist.

They’re kissing in the entryway, Travis up on her toes, her arms around Nolan’s neck, and they eventually make it onto the bed. It’s frantic, and Travis feels wild with it, unsure what she even wants to do besides get her hands in Nolan’s hair and make his cheeks flush all red.

He’s already most of the way there, from what she can see, and he’s also mostly hard against her thigh, which makes her kiss him harder. He sticks his hand into her shorts, but she winces at the dry drag and squirms away. “Ooh, no, not wet enough for that yet.”

“Sorry, sorry,” he says against her mouth. Travis pushes him onto his back and straddles him instead, sighing at the diffuse pressure of his thigh against her. She grinds down, making him groan, and she kisses him to shut him up.

“Shh,” Travis says, and he laughs, his hands tight on the back of her thighs.

Someone knocks, loudly, and she freezes.

“Patty!” It’s Kevin, yelling loud enough for the entire floor to hear.

Travis hangs her head. “Oh my god,” she whispers. “I’m actually going to cry.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Nolan says, pulling her back down and kissing her again. “Just be quiet, it’s not like he has a key.”

“I know you’re in there!” he yells. “Hartsy said he saw you go in there with Teeks. C’mon, bud, you said you’d help me!”

“Help him with _what_?” Travis hisses.

“I don’t know!” he whisper-yells. “I definitely didn’t say I’d help him with anything _tonight_.”

Travis gives herself one more second to mourn, then stands up and makes sure her shirt is straight. “Sit up and turn the TV on. Your cheeks are a lost cause, hope Kev doesn’t notice.”

Nolan groans, but she leaves him there spread out on the bed and goes to answer the door. “Hey, buddy.”

“Teeks!”

Kevin claps her on the shoulder and pushes his way into the room. Nolan still looks irritated, but that particular expression doesn’t look out of place on him so Travis doubts Kevin will notice. He shoves his phone in Nolan’s face.

“You said you’d help me figure out how to text that girl, remember?”

“This is what’s so important?”

“Uh, yeah.” Kevin turns to Travis. “You can help, too!”

“Don’t assume I’m good at that shit just cause I’m a girl.”

Nolan is peering at Kevin’s phone. “Yeah, Trav is pretty useless.”

“Hey,” she snaps, and Nolan smirks at her. Two can play at this game. “Well, you two have fun with this. Good luck, Kev, see you losers tomorrow.”

Nolan gives her a slightly desperate look, but she just waves and high-tails it out of there. She goes back to her room and strips down to her underwear. She’d prefer to _not_ be doing this alone, but she’s certainly doing it anyway.

Travis has never sent a nude in her life—just the _thought_ of the shitstorm that would happen if it got out is enough to take away most of the appeal. And plus, she knows, _intimately_, that dudes are assholes. No thanks.

But this doesn’t count as a nude, she rationalizes to herself. Her face isn’t in it because she’s not a fucking idiot, and it’s not technically a nude if it’s just a picture from her stomach down, with her hand in her underwear.

Travis sends it to Nolan and then gets herself off twice. It’s almost _too_ easy, with how keyed up she is, and not entirely satisfying, but it’ll do. She gets ready for bed and as a treat, smugly reads Nolan’s anguished responses before she falls asleep.

* * *

They beat the Blues the following evening and land back in Philly in the middle of the night, basically. Travis is tired, her gaze caught on Nolan’s shoulders as they file off the plane. She doesn’t even have any kind of excuse to give him a ride home—fucking Kevin.

“I wanna ask you to come over, but I’m tired as fuck,” Travis says quietly while they stroll toward where all the cars are parked.

“Yeah. Kev would have lots of questions if I tried to leave at two in the morning.”

“Come over tomorrow then. Whenever.”

He smiles, just a little, and bumps her shoulder. “Drive safe. Text me when you get home.”

“K.” She peels off when they get to her car and refuses to look back.

Travis manages to stay awake for the drive back to her apartment, and she sends Nolan the little house emoji as she crash-lands into her bed. _Good, rest up for tomorrow_, he sends back, and she laughs. _Think pretty highly of yourself huh_, she says, and she’s almost asleep when her phone buzzes in her hand. _Nah just really motivated._


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks _so_ much to everyone who has commented! comments mean a lot to me always, but especially with this fic since it feels so far out of my comfort zone :)

Travis is nervously pacing around her apartment when Nolan texts her that he’s downstairs. She buzzes him up and worries that it’s going to be awkward or something—fuck, what if he’s bad at sex?—but then she’s letting him in and he’s kissing her and it is emphatically _not_ awkward.

“Wait.” Travis breaks away, breathing hard. They’re still in her entryway, Jesus. “Do you wanna, like, eat lunch or watch a movie or something?”

Nolan blinks down at her, looking a little dazed. “Um. If you want to? We can definitely—”

“No, I’m just fucking with you, I wanna have sex. Right now.”

He rolls his eyes, but he’s definitely smiling as she tugs his head down to kiss him again. He gets a hand on her ass and hauls her up into his arms, making her squeak in surprise. “Haven’t been skipping leg day, eh,” she says, as she wraps her legs around his waist for the sake of balance.

He starts walking toward her bedroom. “Have you? You wanna try this the other way?”

Travis expects him to toss her down on the bed but he doesn’t, sits down on the edge of it instead and lets her kneel over his lap and tilt his head back and kiss him. He moves to her neck after a minute, and she shivers.

“No marks, the boys are fucking vultures about that shit.” Nolan doesn’t say anything, so she slides a hand into his hair and tugs until he lifts his head with a hiss. “I’m serious.”

“I won’t, I swear.”

His cheeks are pinker than usual, his mouth red, and Travis just wants to ruin him. Suddenly antsy, she slides her hands up his stomach, lifting his shirt and hoodie. “C’mon, off.”

He helps and then returns the favor, his hands going straight to her breasts as soon as her shirt is on the floor. She pushes him down onto his back and tugs at the waistband of his sweats. “Take your pants off.”

“Bossy.”

“Oh, are you feeling patient right now?” she says, and Nolan laughs. He tips her over to the side and shucks his sweats, and she follows suit.

There are a lot of things Travis likes about sex, but good, hearty making out in bed has got to be up there. Nolan’s thick thigh feels fucking amazing in between her legs, and she could probably lie here forever just stroking her hands up and down his back and clutching at his ass. Except that she also really wants to fucking come.

When she can’t take it anymore, Travis gets on her back and slides her hand into her underwear. Nolan drapes himself over her and kisses her chest, letting one of his hands drop down to her hip, tracing over the edge of her underwear. “Let me, please.”

Travis smiles. “You think you can?”

“What, make you come? Yeah,” he says, but he doesn’t exactly sound confident. “Just—just tell me what to do.”

“I can definitely do that.”

She wiggles out of her underwear, tossing them off the side of the bed, and takes Nolan’s hand in hers. He immediately tries to put fingers in her, but Travis pulls him back.

“Clit first, always. Get it fucking tattooed on yourself.”

He snorts a little laugh into her neck and obeys. He keeps obeying, whether she tells him to go up or to the left, to go harder or faster or softer. “Fuck,” Travis whines. “I’m close, fuck. Fingers now.”

“How many?”

“Just one.”

She’s so wet, it’s so easy, and he makes a raw noise into her mouth. “Fuck. God, you’re tight.”

“K, another one.” Travis can feel the stretch with two, and she groans, thrusting up against his hand. Just his palm against her clit isn’t quite enough, so she gets her own hand down there for better pressure and comes almost immediately. She’s kind of loud about it, but she tries to muffle the sound against Nolan’s chest.

“Fuck,” he bites out, still thrusting a little with his fingers. “I can feel…fuck.”

“Fuck me, c’mon,” Travis says, suddenly impatient, and she shivers as he drags his fingers out, slow.

“Where’re your condoms?”

“Nightstand,” she says, tipping her head. He kneels up to dig through her drawer and comes up with her vibrator, his eyebrow raised.

“What!” she exclaims, and he puts it back to keep rifling through the drawer.

“You should use that, while I watch.”

“Sure,” she agrees because that sounds fucking hot. “But not right now.”

At least Nolan’s finally found the condoms. “No? What do you wanna do instead?”

Travis rolls her eyes and pushes him down onto his back. She straddles him and then hesitates—she normally prefers being on top because she likes the feeling of control. Or maybe it’s just that she doesn’t prefer the guys being in control, she doesn’t know. She isn’t sure what she wants right now.

Instead, she lifts herself up and lies back down next to him. “Can we do it this way?”

“Course. I wanna kiss you anyway.”

“Patty,” she says, touched, “10-ply.”

He laughs and rolls on top of her. “Please don’t quote Letterkenny when we’re having sex.”

“Tex—”

Nolan cuts her off with a kiss, and then there’s his dick, holy shit.

“Hang on,” she says, her hand shooting out to hold his hip still, and he freezes. It’s been a little while, and Travis can feel it. She takes a minute to breathe against his throat and then slowly lets him shift forward, until his hips are nestled against hers.

“You good?” he asks against her mouth, and she kisses him.

“Yeah,” she says eventually, once the initial sting has settled into something deeper. “You’re good, you can move.

It doesn’t really do anything for her, orgasm-wise, but it still feels really good, a pleasant, achy sort of stretch, and Travis gasps at his first hard thrust. Nolan noses under her chin and presses a kiss there, so soft she has to swallow and exhale out her mouth. “Can you come like this?” he asks, then stills when she shakes her head. “You want to—”

Travis shakes her head again and wraps her arms around his ribs. “No, I like this.”

She does, she’s not lying, she likes the warm, buzzy feeling and the weight of Nolan on top of her and the little grunt he lets out every time he thrusts forward. It doesn’t take him that long to come, which she finds very flattering, and she likes that their fingers are twisted together when he does, even though that’s soft as hell. Travis can’t see his face because it’s tucked in her neck, but she can hear the noise, the soft little whimper that sounds almost pained.

Nolan pulls back eventually, and Travis closes her eyes with a yawn, letting herself drift as she listens to him get off the bed and go into the bathroom.

“Can I?”

“Can you what?” she asks, lifting her head, and Nolan raises an eyebrow at her. He’s in between her legs, one hand on her inner thigh. “Oh! Sure.”

“Oh, sure,” he mocks, even as he pushes her thigh back and gets down on his belly. She rolls her eyes and gets a hand in his hair to yank him closer, but he doesn’t bitch about it like she expects, just kind of hisses and closes his eyes.

Travis is tender, after getting fucked for the first time in a few months, and she shudders at the first touch of his mouth, almost wanting to inch away. It quickly settles into something good, though, and then _really_ good when Nolan slides two fingers in to give her something to clench around.

Sometimes, when someone is trying to make her come, Travis gets in her head too much, worries that it’s taking too long or whatever. But she tries to relax instead, sinking down into the bed and letting her legs fall apart.

“Right there, baby, just like that,” she says, gasping when he gets the angle and the pressure just right. “Keep doing that.” He obeys, thankfully, and both her hands are in his hair by the time she comes—she grips too hard, probably, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

He’s breathing hard, after, and so is she, sprawled out with her arm over her eyes. Nolan kisses her hip, her stomach, in between her breasts, and Travis groans. He’s hard again, she can feel it against her thigh when she rolls toward him, and she makes another noise, surprise and delight rolled into one. “Can we?” she asks, and he kisses her instead of answering.

“You can do literally anything you want.”

Travis laughs and reaches behind herself blindly toward the nightstand, knocking something off with a dull thud but finally closing her fingers around a condom. The fingers of her other hand are buried in Nolan’s hair, so she rips the packet open with her teeth and he reaches down with his free hand to help her put it on.

“I’m gonna remind you that you said that.” She hitches her leg up higher on his waist and guides him inside. It hurts a tiny bit, but it feels good and shivery, like pressing a bruise.

“Fuck. I meant it.”

She hums. “Yeah? You’d let me fuck you instead?”

“Sure.”

“Hold you down?”

His eyes have gone a little glassy, and Travis tightens her hand in his hair until he focuses on her face again. “Yeah.”

“Hmm. Tie you up and sit on your face?”

“Can we just do that right now?”

She laughs and pushes Nolan down onto his back, straddling his hips. It feels like he gets deeper this way, and they both groan. “No cause I wanna do this.”

He sighs, but his affected sense of chill doesn’t really work when he’s flushed down to his chest and his fingers are digging into her thighs. “Fine, I guess.”

“Asshole,” Travis says, then puts two fingers in his mouth. Not that it’s necessary, she’s already plenty wet, but him sucking on her fingers is a good look. She gets her hand in between them, where they’re joined, and wants to melt at the feeling. This is the fucking best.

“Fuck.” His hand creeps up her thigh, his thumb rubbing back and forth across the crease of her groin. “You want me to—”

“Nope.” She takes both his hands and puts them over his head, bracing her weight with one hand holding his wrists. “You can lie there and look pretty.”

Nolan laughs, actually laughs out loud while she’s on his dick, and it might be the proudest moment of her life. Top five, at least.

“I thought that was your job.”

She brings her free hand back down to her clit and sighs. “You’re the pretty one in this relationship, bud.”

“That is absolutely not true.”

Travis is panting already, which is a little embarrassing but whatever, she’s kind of easy for it.

“You already have me in bed, you don’t have to sweet talk me.”

“I’m gonna. This is the best thing I have ever seen, in my entire life.”

She drops her head and tries to suck in more air. “Stop.”

“No. C’mon, let me see you.”

Travis holds his wrists tighter and grinds down, chasing her orgasm. When she’s kind of in the zone like this it doesn’t take long at all, which is mostly a blessing, a little bit of a curse—when it feels this good, she kind of wishes it would last longer. Nolan must feel it when she comes because he curses, gripping her hand with both of his and thrusting up. “Fuck, Trav, _fuck_.”

She shudders through the aftershocks, clenching down on him harder than she needs to because he seems to like that, then releases his wrists to sit up fully, rolling her shoulders. “Holy shit.” Nolan hasn’t moved, his hands still above his head, and it looks like he’s trying really hard to be still. “What do you want?”

“Just—” He bends one of his knees, getting enough leverage to thrust up. “I’m close.”

Travis braces both hands on his chest, and they get into a rhythm pretty quickly. It almost hurts, after coming three times and getting fucked twice, but it’s right on the knife edge where it also feels really good. And she gets to see Nolan’s face this time as he comes. It’s objectively dumb, probably, like most people’s orgasm faces are, but Travis loves it, wants to see it again and again, the way his eyes squint and shut and his entire face scrunches up.

She hisses as she lifts herself up and he slips out—the tender, empty feeling isn’t her favorite. She stays straddling his hips while she catches her breath, hands on his chest, just looking at him. His cheeks are red, his hair messy…fuck, he’s pretty.

Nolan finally moves his hands, bringing them down to her thighs. Travis feels sensitive everywhere, like her nerves are over-exposed, and she shivers as he rubs his thumbs across her skin. “What?”

She tilts her head. People say stuff they don’t mean during sex all the time, she knows. But she’s curious. “Did you mean it?”

“Did I mean what?”

“Like, saying that you’d like it if I held you down or whatever.”

“Did _you_ mean it?” Nolan shoots back, and she smirks.

“Sure.”

“Oh.” He’s already red, but he’s getting redder, she swears. “Them, um, yeah. If you want.”

Travis thinks she does want. “Like what kinda stuff?”

“I dunno.” Nolan’s eyes are fixed on the ceiling. “I wouldn’t mind if you, like, bossed me around in bed a little. Or whatever.”

Travis gets her hand into his hair, making him look at her. “Have you done that before?”

“No,” he grits out.

“But you want to,” she guesses.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe,” she echoes. “Like…maybe you’d like it if I told you exactly how to fuck me? Or got myself off and made you watch?”

“Yeah,” Nolan breathes. He finally breaks eye contact with a groan, twisting so that his face is mostly buried in a pillow. “But we gotta stop talking about this, I can’t go again.”

Travis laughs and lowers herself down until she’s lying on his chest. They need to get up soon—she needs to pee and she can also feel the condom against her thigh, which is disgusting, but she’s going to enjoy the afterglow for a fucking minute first.

* * *

Travis has mixed feelings about charity events. She likes _raising money_ for charity, obviously, she’s not a monster, and she mostly likes meeting fans, especially the kids. She could do without being forced to schmooze with the old rich guys who buy corporate boxes and season tickets, though, especially when she’s wearing an uncomfortable dress and heels that make her want to cry. Some of the old rich guys are fine and sweet and remind her of her grandfather or something, but others stare at her ass too much in her dress and make thinly-veiled comments about how having women in the NHL must be _so distracting_ for the men.

She manages to disentangle herself from a conversation with a man in the latter category, and she tries to shake it off as she heads for a table that’s full of mostly Flyers. Travis is _done_ schmoozing for the night, she’s done her fair share, she doesn’t care how many pointed looks she gets from the staff.

Kevin whistles when he sees her. “You clean up nice, Teeks,” he calls out, and she does a little curtsy. She actually found a comfortable dress this year, even if the heels are awful as always. It’s red and kind of clingy, and it dips fairly low in the front, though it’s not like she has any cleavage to show off, and really low in the back.

Travis leans her elbows on Nolan’s shoulders. “I wanna dance, who’s dancing with me?”

Half the guys at the table point at Nolan, and he groans. He tips his head back to look at her. “No.”

“Too bad,” Travis says sweetly. “C’mon.”

She tugs on his arm, hard, and he makes a face as he stands up. “I don’t dance.”

“I don’t care,” Travis says over her shoulder, dragging him toward the dance floor by the hand. “It’s a slow song, you telling me that you can’t even dance to a _slow song_? Embarrassing.”

He glares at her but it works, she knew it would. He pulls her close, his hand warm on her bare back, and when she looks up, his eyes are soft.

“You, uh, look amazing. By the way.”

“And here I thought you hadn’t noticed. Thank you.”

“I always notice.”

“You look really nice,” she says because it’s true.

“You see me in a suit all the time.”

“Accept the compliment, asshole.”

“Thank you,” Nolan says grudgingly, and she hides a smile in his shoulder. “So I…I got a room here for tonight. Actually.”

Travis leans back and grins. “A hotel room! Someone’s feeling confident, eh?”

“Shut up,” he grumbles. “I thought it’d be nice.”

“That _is_ nice. For us, I presume?”

“Obviously.”

Travis winces. “God, leaving the Ritz in the morning wearing this…I’m gonna look like such a call girl.”

“A really expensive one, though,” Nolan offers, and she laughs. “You don’t have to, though. I, uh, brought a bag with a change of clothes. You’ve left enough shit at my place.”

“Oh,” she says, touched. “Thanks, that’s actually really sweet.”

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“I’m not,” Travis says with a smile as she squeezes his hand. She drifts a little bit closer, though they are about as close as she’s comfortable being in public, and Nolan lowers his voice.

“I really wanna kiss you right now.”

“Please don’t,” she says, and he laughs against her ear.

“Just what every guy wants to hear.”

The song ends then, and he gives her a quick squeeze before stepping back. Part of her wants to keep dancing, the only socially acceptable way they can actually be close to each other, but it would probably look a little suspicious.

Nolan comes up to her later, and she gratefully uses his presence to exit the conversation she’s been having with some dude who has way too many thoughts about the Flyers’ penalty kill. “Nice to meet you!” she lies cheerfully, then follows Nolan over to a high top table in the corner. “God, thank you.”

“You’re welcome. And I’m, uh, ready to go, if you are.”

“Okay, I’ll follow you in a few minutes. What’s the room number?”

“1410.”

“Got it.”

He leaves, and Travis slowly makes her way toward the exit, saying goodbye to the handful of people she actually wants to say goodbye to. She gets her coat and then waits for the crowd to thin before walking briskly over to the elevators. No one’s there, thankfully, to see her press the up button instead of the down one, and her elevator is empty all the way to the 14th floor.

She finds the room, knocks, and when Nolan opens it, he looks her up and down, exaggerated. His jacket and tie are already gone, and he leans against the door jamb.

“Are you the escort I called for?”

Travis shoves at his chest and pushes her way inside. “I need advance notice if you wanna role play,” she says, and he laughs. “Ooh, a suite. Fancy pants.”

She wanders through, checking out the bathroom and poking her head into the living room. The main room has the bed—giant, naturally—and an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over the city. “You don’t have to impress me, you know.”

“I know,” he mutters, then grabs her by the waist. Kissing him is _way_ easier when she’s wearing heels, but they’re still evil so she kicks them off. His hands sweep up and down her bare back as she steers him toward the bed and tips them down. “Did I tell you that you look really good in this?”

“Yeah, you did, but I had forgotten, so thank you.”

Nolan’s grumbling stomach interrupts her. “Fuck, I’m starving.”

“Me too.” Travis is always surprised at how mediocre the food can be at these things. “You think we can order room service and then have sex before it gets here?”

“Definitely.” Nolan reaches over her for the little book that’s on the nightstand. “What do you want?”

Travis quickly glances at the menu and picks something at random, more interested in undoing the buttons of Nolan’s shirt. She kisses his stomach, and he groans.

“Okay, okay, I know what I want. Phone’s on your side, you wanna call?”

“No way, I’m not calling, it’s your name on the room.”

Paranoid maybe, but Travis isn’t taking any chances.

When Nolan hangs up, he rolls onto his side and pulls her close. “You don’t want people to know about us,” he says, and it’s not a question.

“Do you?”

Nolan hesitates and traces down the neckline of her dress. “I want whatever you want,” he says, and she laughs.

“Good answer. But seriously.”

“I am serious. I know that…it would be a lot worse for you, probably.”

“Yeah, it would,” she says frankly. She’s private anyway, hockey gets enough of her as it is, but to add in the fact that Nolan’s a teammate…not great. “There’s a reason I haven’t—I mean, you know the shit people say about girls in the league. They think we’re fucking everyone anyway, they can’t be _right_.”

“I know,” Nolan says, and it isn’t the kind of _I know_ that annoys her. He _does_ know because he listens to her complain about it, and while Travis doesn’t really think he can ever fully understand, at least he tries really hard.

“I’ll kiss you on the ice if we win the Cup.”

“_When_,” he corrects. “Deal.”

“The team will be weird about it, too. I might—might not want to tell them, either. At least for a while.”

“We probably have to tell Kev, though. If I keep going out at night and not coming home or whatever, he’s gonna assume I’m seeing someone anyway and then it’ll be a thing and he’ll tell the guys. If we tell him, he won’t spread it.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Maybe after the next road trip or something?” she says, and he nods. “Are you okay with, like, not telling that many people?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“You sure? This isn’t just about me.”

“You’re more important,” he says easily, and Travis rolls her eyes.

“Not true.”

“I mean—” Nolan clears his throat. “I do wanna be able to tell my family or whatever that you’re my girlfriend.”

“So I’m your girlfriend now?”

“I don’t know, are you hooking up with random guys from bars in Nashville?” he asks, and she lights up, delighted.

“_Jeal-ous_,” she says, sing-song, and he scowls at her. “I ended up in _your_ room that night, remember?”

“Yeah, and then you left to go get yourself off, I remember that quite vividly, actually.”

Travis laughs and then rolls them so she’s on top. She slides the straps of her dress off her shoulders, and Nolan swallows as he helps her pull it down to her waist. “You’re not wearing a bra.”

“Where the hell am I supposed to hide a bra in this thing?” she asks. “And I am obviously not dating anyone else, hooking up with anyone else, whatever. Just you.”

“Me neither,” Nolan mumbles. “Obviously.”

His cheeks are red, and Travis cups his face in her hands. “Was that enough emotional talk for you? Do you want more? We can—”

“Please stop,” he says, and she laughs.

* * *

“So what’s your safe word?”

“Excuse me?”

Nolan looks up from his phone, and Travis glances at him before she has to look back at the road. They’re on their way to practice before flying off to Florida, and she thought this was as good of a time as any. “I said, what’s your safe word?”

“What are you planning that requires a _safe word_?”

“It’s a very important part of safe and consensual sex!”

“Did you look that up?”

“Maybe I did, so what?”

“Gritty,” he says, after a minute, and Travis laughs.

“No way. That comes up in conversation.”

“It better not during _sex_,” Nolan says, indignant. “I picked the least sexy thing I could think of.”

“We can just use the stoplight. Red, yellow, green.”

“Fine. But if I ever say Gritty in bed, that’s a bad sign.”

Travis laughs. “Noted. So, like, mascots aren’t your thing? We can cross the furry stuff off the list?”

Nolan groans and goes back to his phone, slouching in his seat. “I’m never having sex with you ever again.”

“You’re a fuckin’ liar, bud.”

* * *

They play the Panthers first, which is the most recent team to have their first girl. Travis doesn’t know her, Amy-something, she was an NCAA girl and just recently got called up from the AHL. But they meet up at the red line during warm-ups, where Travis introduces herself and welcomes her to the league. At least by now the novelty has worn off enough that if there’s a woman on each side, the league doesn’t make them take a picture beforehand like they’re some sort of sideshow.

Amy seems nice. Travis doesn’t necessarily believe that all the girls in the league have to be besties or whatever, but she likes knowing they’re there, likes knowing that at least a few other people out there go through the same stuff she does.

She’s on the bench in the third when the whistle blows for a penalty. It looks like it’s on Jones, some Flyers kid Travis barely knows who was called up earlier in the week because of an injury. Claude is next to her, and he’s standing up, leaning over the boards to yell at the refs, even though they aren’t in earshot. They haven’t signaled the penalty, and Travis swallows down the dread crawling up her throat.

“G,” she hisses, pulling on his jersey. He’s yelling in French now. “Sit down.”

“That was a fucking bullshit call! I was watching, he didn’t do anything.”

It goes up on the board as a five-minute major as the ref is escorting Jones to the box, and Travis winces. There wasn’t anything physical on the play, so it’s definitely a penalty for whatever he must have said to Amy. Fucking great.

Travis knows the cameras will be on her, so she keeps her face as straight and emotionless as possible, even as she’s fuming on the inside. The rest of the bench is pretty quiet. The Panthers score twice on their extended power play to wipe out the Philly lead, the small but mighty home crowd boos every time a Flyer touches the puck, and then the game’s over.

Travis strips out of her gear as quickly as possible and walks right up to Jones, who’s still taking his pads off when she shoves him. She doesn’t hold anything back, so he goes tumbling down into his stall, onto the seat.

“You piece of shit,” she says, louder than she meant to, and the rest of the room quiets.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jones tries to stand back up, but she shoves him again, keeping him seated.

“Teeks.” Nolan’s behind her, touching her arm, but Travis shakes him off.

“What did you say to her?”

“To who?”

“To _Amy_,” she spits, and he still looks confused.

“Oh, the chick on the other team?”

“Yeah. What the fuck did you say?”

He shrugs, but he’s not meeting her eyes. “Just like, normal chirping stuff.”

Yeah fucking right. They never call that penalty. “What,” Travis repeats. Her voice sounds strange, even to her own ears. “Did. You. Say.”

The room is still quiet, even the equipment guys and the fucking coaches are just standing there, watching them. Travis can just barely see Claude out of the corner of her eye, standing next to her. Thank fucking god the media hasn’t been let in yet.

Jones still hasn’t said anything, and Travis really, really wants to punch him. She can’t, she knows she can’t, but she flexes her hand anyway, just to give her body something to do.

“So, what, you’ll say it to her and not to me?” He’s still not talking, still not even looking at her, but he looks embarrassed now, maybe because no one is coming to his defense. Not that anyone is really coming to her defense, either. “You’re barely good enough to chirp anyone about _anything_, and it’s fucking cowardly to resort to that shit. You’re an embarrassment of a teammate.”

Travis leaves, and Claude follows her. “Travis—”

He grabs her arm, and she spins around. “I am _not_ doing media, I won’t.” The journalists get to request who they want to talk to, and they’re going to ask for her, she knows it, even though she didn’t even have a point tonight. Then they’ll ask dumb questions about _how it makes her feel_ that her teammate is apparently a raging asshole and/or not-so-subtly insinuate that her teammates’ behavior is her responsibility, somehow. She doesn’t know if she’ll get fined or whatever for refusing, but she also doesn’t care. “Make him fucking do it.”

“I’ll tell them you’re not doing it.”

She shakes him off and goes down the hall toward her own dressing room. The accommodations on the road vary wildly from arena to arena, but generally she has a stall in the main room with her gear and a separate space where she can change and shower. The “separate space” in Florida is about the size of a broom closet.

Travis takes a quick shower and changes her clothes, then sits with her head in her hands for a minute.

Everyone knows she’s kind of a hot head on the ice, but she’s fairly chill off of it, especially about team stuff. It’s a hard balance, when the guys act like assholes—_actual _assholes, not just dumbasses—knowing when to call them out and when to let it go. Travis wants to call them out all the time, but she tries to resist sometimes, so she’s not _that girl_. Not that she should care about being that girl, but she does. After all, everyone in hockey fetishizes the magic of the _team_, the dynamic, the brotherly bonding or what the fuck ever, all the stuff that they figure would get screwed up when you throw women into the mix.

And Travis kind of just did that.

She sits, enjoying the silence, until someone raps on the door. “What,” she calls out, and Nolan pokes his head in.

“Bus call is in five minutes. We took care of your gear, and I saved you some pizza.”

“Thanks,” she says quietly.

Travis puts her headphones on, along with her _don’t fucking talk to me_ face, and tries to stay at the edge of the group as they get on the bus and then the plane for the flight to Raleigh. Nolan stands between her and everyone else, which is protection she doesn’t deserve or need but is grateful for anyway. Just for tonight.

Once they’re in the air, Nolan knocks her arm with his elbow. “Are you asleep?” he whispers.

“No.” She slips her headphones off and rubs her eyes. “That fucking asshole. I wanna punch him in his stupid fucking face.”

“G really laid into him after you left. So did AV.” Nolan stretches out in his seat. “I offered to do media, but they said no.”

Travis laughs. “Yeah cause they know if you’re _offering_, that means you’ll say something bad.”

“Wanted to, though.”

“Glad you didn’t, I caused enough drama on my own.”

“No you didn’t,” Nolan says, and Travis grimaces. “You _didn’t_.”

Jones was in the wrong, for sure, but she shouldn’t have made a scene. Hopefully everyone will stick to the tenet of _what happens in the room stays in the room_, so she won’t have to read about this on Twitter, at least. Jones’ll be pretty easy to avoid, anyway, no matter how long he stays up. They don’t really travel in the same circles, clique-wise, and he plays on the fourth line. Not to brag, but Travis does not.

The flights after games are usually pretty quiet, everyone either eating or trying to wind down, and this one isn’t an exception. Claude comes down the aisle, stops at their row, and Travis winces.

“If you’re gonna yell at me, could you wait until tomorrow.”

“I’m not gonna _yell_ at you.” He squeezes into their row and sits down on Nolan’s knee.

Nolan rolls his eyes. “Sure,” he says flatly, “just take a seat.”

Claude ignores him and lowers his voice. “I’m really sorry,” he says, and Travis doesn’t say anything. The behavior of her teammates isn’t her responsibility, but it is Claude’s, kind of. “Did you know that I give a speech?”

“What?”

“Every year, during training camp, I give a speech.”

“You’re gonna have to be more specific, there are a lot of speeches.”

“I get one of the coaches to distract you and I talk to the guys about you and about the expectations we as an organization have as to how everyone treats women, on and off the ice, no matter who they play for.”

Travis makes a face. She had no idea he did that, being singled out in that kind of way is actually her worst nightmare. “God, G—”

“It’s a really good speech,” Nolan offers.

“Thank you,” Claude says, looking genuinely warmed, and Travis rolls her eyes. “Jones wasn’t here for that, which isn’t an excuse. Him saying whatever shit he does to other women in the league means that I didn’t do a good enough job conveying what our standards are and what the culture is here, which is my fault. I’m sorry.”

Travis is uncomfortable with this situation. “I’m sorry I made a scene. I’m not apologizing to him, though.”

“You shouldn’t, I would never ask you to. Do you want him to apologize to you?” he asks, and she laughs.

“Fuck no.” That would be cringey and forced and…no thank you.

“He’s going back to Lehigh after the road trip anyway.” With that, Claude stands up, and Nolan shakes out his leg.

“Lay off the postgame pizza, bud,” he says, and Claude flicks him on the side of the head.

“Lift more weights, bud.”

* * *

Travis feels a little bit better in the morning. Everyone treats her the same at team breakfast, none of the weird kid-glove attitude that she was afraid of, and Jones looks appropriately cowed.

They just have a video session, no practice, and Nolan comes up to her room afterward, under the guise of playing some Xbox. Instead, she pounces on him as soon as the door’s closed, pressing him up against the wall.

“So,” he says against her mouth, his hand tight and possessive on her hip, “no video games?”

“If you want.” Travis pulls back and tugs her shirt off. “I had something else in mind, though.”

“Yeah, let’s do whatever that is.”

He steers her toward the bed, but the chair is closer, so she pushes him down and sits in his lap. Nolan strips his shirt off, and Travis inches closer, mapping out his shoulders with her hands as they kiss.

“Your ass is amazing,” he says, fitting his hands in the dip of her waist and then slipping down and around to her ass. “In case you didn’t know.”

“I’ve heard.”

He makes an annoyed noise against her shoulder, squeezing harder, and she smiles. After a minute, he gets his hand in between them, brushing over her underwear. “You want me to—”

“Nope. Told you I had something specific in mind.”

Travis gets to her feet and works her leggings and underwear over her hips. He’s still sitting, unabashedly looking at her, very obviously hard in his sweats. “And what is that?”

She smiles. “Take off your pants and get on the bed.”

Nolan raises an eyebrow at her but complies. He stands up slowly, sliding his sweats down even slower. She didn’t specify the speed, but she appreciates the show.

“Are you going to join me?” he asks as he gets on the bed and stretches out. He’s so tall and broad, and Travis lets herself drool for a second.

She nods and straddles him, sitting right over his dick. The fabric of his boxers feels soft under her ass, and she grinds down for a second. Nolan groans but doesn’t move, and Travis grins.

She lifts an eyebrow, and he nods, licking his lips as his hands start to slide up her thighs. “How about this,” she says, conversational, bracing her hands on his chest. “I’m gonna sit on your face, and if you can make me come twice in five minutes, you get to come however you want. Fuck me, I’ll blow you, you can jerk off on my face, whatever.”

Nolan’s eyes are wide, and his hands are a lot tighter on her thighs than they were a minute ago. His dick twitches under her, and she grinds down again, making him hiss. “And if I don’t?”

“You still get to come.” Travis has done her research—not _just_ porn, even—and knows that delaying or denying orgasms is a common part of this. But she doesn’t know if she likes that. Sex is supposed to be fun, and orgasms are the best part. She’ll have to ask him about it later. “But I get to decide how.”

He clears his throat. “Yeah.”

“You sure?”

She lifts up on her knees, and Nolan nods. “Will you, uh, tell me what to do? Like before.”

Travis grins again. “Yeah, baby.”

“Five minutes starting when?” he asks, and she looks over at the alarm clock on the hotel nightstand.

“Right now.”

He tugs her forward sharply, tipping her off-balance, and she laughs as she catches herself against the headboard. The laugh quickly turns into a groan, though, at the first touch of his tongue, and Travis closes her eyes. He knows what she likes for the most part, but she gives him some instructions anyway, punctuating them with little tugs on his hair that make him groan against her.

Nolan pulls back, and she’s a bit embarrassed by the noise she makes. “Can I use my hands?”

That wasn’t in the plans, but— “Since you asked.”

Two fingers in her feels pretty fucking good, and Travis has to bite back a lot of noise as she leans her forehead against the cool wall and comes. Claude has the room next to hers, she’s pretty sure, and _god_, she cannot think about that right now. “That’s so good, Pat,” she whispers. “Holy shit.”

He gets his mouth back on her immediately, but she tightens her hand in his hair and lifts herself up a little, just out of his reach. “Give it just a second, baby.”

Nolan kisses her inner thigh instead, up toward the crease of her groin, until she feels ready for it and spreads her knees again. The second one is a lot faster, like it usually is if she can get the timing right, and she groans louder than she probably should. “Fucking…goddamn, Nol.”

When she feels like she can move again, Travis looks over at the clock and runs both hands through Nolan’s hair, thumbing across his cheekbones. “Five minutes, good job, baby.” It might’ve been a little closer to six, but she’s feeling generous. She scoots back on shaky legs until she’s straddling his hips. “What do you want?”

“You have condoms?”

“Yeah, in my bag in the bathroom.”

Nolan sits up and pushes her backward, until she’s flat on her back with her head near the foot of the bed. “Stay there.”

He’s naked when he comes back, condom on, and he wastes no time in sitting on his heels, getting her legs around his waist, and tugging her into his lap with a hand under her ass. It feels good from this angle, really deep, and Travis groans as she arches up, her head pressing against the bed.

“You good?”

“Uh-huh,” she breathes.

“Touch yourself,” he says, jerking his chin, and Travis smirks.

“Look who’s calling the shots now, eh.”

“You said however I wanted.”

Travis did, so she reaches down and rubs at her clit. She feels kind of exposed like this, but Nolan’s gaze feels warm and appreciative, not greedy or gross like it would feel with some guys, and she supposes he deserves it. Just the memory of it, how he eagerly did whatever she wanted, is enough to send her over the edge after just a few minutes, and she digs her heels into his ass as she comes. He fucks her through it, cursing, and comes before she’s even gotten her breath back.

Travis takes care of the condom—gross—and when she gets back, Nolan doesn’t look like he’s moved at all. She feels a little bit self-conscious as she gets back on the bed and crawls over to him. What if he wasn’t that into it? Should they have talked more about it beforehand?

“Was that okay?” she asks after a minute, when he still hasn’t said anything.

Nolan huffs a tiny laugh and rubs his hand over his face. “I almost came.”

“You _did_ come,” she says, confused.

“I mean, uh.” He waves his hand. “Before.”

Oh. _Oh_.

“Oh,” Travis says plainly. He looks embarrassed, and she can’t have that. “That’s hot as fuck.”

Nolan groans and throws his arm over his face, but she peels it off and peppers kisses across his face until he’s smiling, reluctantly, and shoving her away.


	4. Chapter 4

“What are you looking at?”

Travis bites back a sound of surprise and fumbles to turn her phone screen off. “Holy shit, I thought you were still asleep.”

Nolan slides closer, his chest to her back, and looks over her shoulder. “Were you watching porn?”

“No.” He makes a little sound of disbelief, and she twists her head to glare at him. “I wasn’t! You’re _here_, I’m in your _bed_. Watching porn while you’re sleeping would be weird.”

“I think you were doing more research.”

“Don’t make fun of my research, you came your fucking brains out last night.”

Kevin was gone the night before, so Travis tied Nolan’s hands above his head and sat on his dick, using her vibrator and lifting off every time he got close. She came like a thousand times, and Nolan almost cried. It was fucking great.

“Oh, I’m not,” he says. But he’s kind of smirking.

“I’m not watching porn.”

She’s still naked from last night, and Nolan’s hand on her hip drifts lower. “You sure?”

Travis groans. So she’s a little wet, whatever. “Shut up.”

“Nah.” He slides two fingers inside, enough to make her suck in a breath and squirm against him a little. “So what were you looking at?”

“Is this, like, some kind of weird sexual interrogation technique?”

“No, this is just because I wanna fuck you again. The conversation is separate.”

Travis laughs and reaches for her phone. She had been looking for handcuffs—_nice_ ones, not fucking cheap ones—because she thinks that might be a fun thing to try, and she stumbled on the lingerie section of the website. She’s never bought lingerie before, at least nothing that matches on purpose or is just supposed to look sexy or whatever, but some of this stuff is…intriguing.

She turns the screen back on, and Nolan leans closer over her shoulder to see. It changes the angle of his fingers, and Travis groans.

“Holy shit,” he says, “is that how much that costs? In _dollars_?”

“I know, right?”

“How can so little fabric cost so much money?”

“I have no idea. They also have leather handcuffs that are $500.”

He laughs. “You should buy that.”

“The handcuffs? Oh, I’m definitely going to.”

“No, whatever this thing is. That’s hot, it would look fucking great on you.”

Travis doesn’t know what it’s called, either, but it’s strappy and black and she _would_ look good in it. “Maybe I will.”

“I’ll even buy it for you.”

“I’ll get it, I think I can afford it.”

“Only fair, you do make more money than me,” Nolan says, and she laughs. He’s hard, she can feel against her ass, so she squirms again.

“Okay, fuck me, c’mon.”

He gets a condom on and plasters himself against her back again, kissing under her ear. “How do you want it?” he whispers against her neck, and Travis smiles into the pillow.

“Just like this.”

He obeys, and Travis arches her back at the feeling. They haven’t done it like this before, and while usually she’d prefer it if they could kiss more easily, she fucking hates morning breath, on her or anyone else, so this is pretty handy.

Nolan gets his arm around her again, reaching down toward her clit, but Travis intercepts his hand and brings it up to her breast instead. She’s legitimately tired after so many orgasms last night and doesn’t actually want to come again. “I’m good.”

She reaches for her phone, and Nolan falters for a second. “Are you—ordering lingerie while we’re having sex?”

“It’s called multitasking, bud.” He laughs, and she flips to another tab, a different set that had caught her eye. “What about that one?”

“Both, definitely both.”

“I thought wearing it could be, like, a sign.”

“A sign of what? That you want to have sex?”

“Well, yeah, duh, but more like—like I want to be in charge.”

“Fuck. Yeah, definitely that.”

Nolan’s breath sounds a little short, so Travis puts her phone back on the nightstand and tips forward a little, bending one knee up toward her waist to keep herself propped up. It feels good like this, a different angle, and while it’s pleasurable in a different way than having an orgasm, Travis likes it, likes feeling the weight of Nolan draped over her sometimes.

He’s muffling sounds into her hair, and she can tell when he comes by how his hand tightens, almost painfully so, on her hip. He stays there for a minute, his breath a hot rush against her neck, and Travis gets an arm behind herself awkwardly to scratch through his hair.

He rolls onto his back eventually, and Travis echoes the motion, yawning and stretching under the covers. “That was nice.”

“You sure you’re good?” Nolan asks, and she nods.

“Very good.”

There’s a knock on Nolan’s door, and they both freeze. Heart hammering, Travis speaks as softly as she can. “Did you lock it?”

“There’s no lock!” he hisses.

The doorknob starts to turn, and Travis ducks under the sheets.

“Hey, bud, what—holy shit, dude, didn’t know you had company, sorry!” The door squeaks, but Travis doesn’t hear it actually close. Kevin’s voice lowers. “Dude, Teeks was still here when I went to _bed_ last night. What, did you kick her out so you could call up some… Oh, fuck.”

Travis can’t see what Nolan’s face is doing, but she doesn’t imagine it’s anything good. He’s a terrible liar, and there isn’t really an easy way out of this.

So she steels herself and sits up. “Hi.”

Kevin gapes at her and immediately slaps his hand over his eyes.

Travis sighs. “Dude, I’m under the sheets, you can’t see anything.”

“There is a _condom wrapper on the floor_,” he says shrilly. “You are like my little sister, I can’t see that shit.”

“Aren’t you happy your little sister is practicing safe sex?” she says, and Kevin groans.

“What exactly is—wait, no. _How long_ has this—”

“How about you give us a second,” Nolan interrupts, “and we can talk about this with clothes on.”

Kevin backs up, hand still over his eyes, and bumps into the wall before he manages to leave the room and slam the door shut.

Travis covers her face with a groan, and Nolan sighs. “He’s never gonna believe that we were planning to tell him today, is he?”

“No, probably not,” Travis agrees. “Fuck.”

She dawdles as long as she can while getting dressed and brushing her teeth, but eventually they can’t put it off any longer. Kevin’s in the kitchen, and Travis can’t quite tell how he’s reacting to this. He mostly looks confused.

“So what the fuck is going on?”

Nolan gets two mugs out of the cabinet. “We’re not just hooking up or whatever. We’re, like, dating and shit.”

“My boyfriend is so romantic, I’m so lucky,” Travis says, then smiles when Nolan glares at her.

Kevin still looks like he’s in shock. “For—for how long?” he asks, and Nolan shrugs.

“Couple months.”

“A couple _months_, and you didn’t tell me?”

“We didn’t really tell anyone,” Travis points out. “You were going to be the first.”

“What about the team?”

“What do you mean, what about the team?” she asks.

“Like…” Kevin makes some kind of incomprehensible hand gesture. “Aren’t you worried that this is going to, like, screw with team chemistry or cause problems in the room or whatever?”

Nolan slams the fridge door with slightly more force than necessary. “It’s been a while, and it has caused exactly no problems.”

“Yeah, because no one knows.”

“And because we’re fucking professionals,” he fires back.

“And what about when you break up, what then?”

“What the actual fuck, dude?” Nolan says. He’s morphed from irritated to full-on pissed, Travis can tell. She’s not exactly feeling cheery herself.

To Kevin’s credit, he seems to realize that he crossed a line. “I’m sorry,” he says immediately.

“If that happens, then it’ll be our problem, not anyone else’s. Give us some credit, Jesus, we have actually talked this through. This isn’t, like…we didn’t just do this on a fucking whim.”

“I’m just—people are going to talk, it’s going to be a big deal.” Kevin’s eyes slide to Travis. “Especially—”

“Hey,” Nolan snaps.

“C’mon, you know everyone is gonna give her more shit about this than you.”

“Everyone doesn’t need to include you!”

“_She_ is sitting right here,” Travis says sharply. “And I’m fulling fucking aware of that, yes, Kevin, that’s why we haven’t told anyone. We both know this is a risk, especially for me, but since we’ve already decided that it’s worth it, some support right now would maybe be nice.”

“I do,” he says quickly. “Support you, I mean. I think it’s great.”

Nolan doesn’t look convinced. “Funny way of showing it,” he mutters.

“I really do. I just…I worry about you guys, I sometimes think of you guys as kids still, you know, but you’re not. I know you’ve thought everything through already.”

“We have,” Nolan says, and Kevin nods.

“I believe you. I’m fully on board.” He wraps Travis up in a hug first and then drags her over to Nolan and pulls him in, too. “Can I give you both the shovel talk at the same time? Wait, first, how’d it happen? Tell me everything.”

“No,” Nolan says immediately, breaking out of the hug.

“Well,” Travis starts, “he took me out on a date without actually telling me it was a date.”

Kevin laughs, and Nolan looks murderous.

* * *

They’re in Montreal, it’s the second period, and Travis is on the bench when the crowd starts to rumble, that particular swell of noise that, in hockey, only means one thing: fight.

She stands up to see what’s going on, and when the crush of players breaks apart she can see that it’s fucking _Nolan_, out there in open ice whaling on some guy. “What the fuck,” Travis mutters. It wasn’t even off a face-off.

He doesn’t exactly dominate the fight, but he doesn’t get dropped, either, and they get pulled apart before it can really get too far. Matching majors, naturally, and Nolan looks fucking livid as he goes to the box. At least he doesn’t appear to be bleeding or otherwise injured. Travis taps her stick against the boards like everyone else and wonders what the fuck that was.

As they file off the ice for the second intermission, Travis bumps shoulders with Nolan. Bumps her shoulder into his arm, whatever. “What the hell was that?”

“He was saying shit,” Nolan says shortly.

“What kind of shit?”

“About _you_,” he spits, and Travis sees red. He tries to push past her into the locker room, but she blocks his path and lets everyone else file past them.

“What the _fuck_ Patty, nobody fights for me, you know that. They’re always gonna say stuff, you can’t react like that, you just can’t.”

“And _you_ can’t tell me what to do.”

“I can when it’s about me! I know things have changed, but that doesn’t give you the right to—”

“You don’t under—”

“Oh, I don’t _get _it?” she hisses. She wants to fucking scream, but there are lots of people walking by, and she wants this to look like a normal hockey-related conversation if at all possible. “They say shit to me all the time. _All_ the time. I want to fucking murder all of them, every single shift, but I can’t, obviously, and neither can you. I had to learn to deal with it, and I guess you do, too.”

Nolan looks furious, pink spots high on his cheeks, and just as he opens his mouth, the locker room door opens.

“Uh, guys?” It’s Claude, looking between them. “C’mon.”

Travis grits her teeth and goes inside. At least it won’t seem too weird or suspicious, since the sight of her and Nolan arguing isn’t exactly an uncommon occurrence.

Turns out they can’t even manage to win the fucking game, which sucks. She’s still not speaking to Nolan, and vice versa, as they hurry to leave the arena and head to the airport to go to Boston. Guys get in spats and get pissed at each other all the time, but since this is maybe more relationship-related than hockey-related, Travis would rather not let everyone know that she’s upset by switching up her seat on the plane. So she just sits in her normal window seat, puts her headphones on, pretends to be asleep, and doesn’t acknowledge Nolan when she hears him sit down next to her.

She stays that way through the flight, trying not to think about it and mostly failing. She really doesn’t like it when her gender becomes an issue, like when her teammates start fights because some guy on the other team calls her a whore or whatever. Nolan knows that, but Travis assumes it’s still hard for him to deal with, maybe more so now. She can’t imagine how pissed off she’d be if the roles were reversed, if someone was talking shit about him to her.

They get to the hotel late, as always on game nights, and if the fact that her room is next to Nolan’s isn’t a sign, then the fucking connecting door probably is. Travis has barely put her bag down when there’s a soft knock on it, and she doesn’t hesitate to open it. She’s cooled down a lot in the past two-plus hours, and now she just feels kind of bad for her reaction.

“I’m—”

“Don’t even,” Travis interrupts. She wraps her arms around Nolan’s waist and his come up around her shoulders, squeezing tight. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize, I shouldn’t have done it. I know how you feel about that.”

“I would do the same, if someone talked shit about you. But I—I lost you for an entire season already,” she says into his shirt. “You can’t hurt yourself just because some asshole says something stupid about me, you just can’t. It’s not worth it.”

“I won’t. Just lost my cool.”

“Hmm, wouldn’t know what that’s like,” she says, and Nolan laughs a little.

Travis finally pulls back. “How’s your face?” she asks, taking his chin in her hand. His eye is starting to swell a little, and there will probably be some colorful bruising in the days to come, but she doesn’t see any blood or signs of acute injury.

“It’s fine,” he says, flexing his hand, and she looks at that, too. His knuckles are red, and there are some scrapes, but it’s not too bad.

“I’m gonna get you some ice,” she decides.

“It’s really fine,” Nolan says, but he’s smiling.

“Don’t care. Get ready for bed, I’ll be right back.”

Travis grabs the ice bucket and puts her slides on. She runs into Kevin, unfortunately, in the room with the ice machine, and he smirks at her. “Did you kiss and make up?”

“Shut up,” she hisses, bumping him out of the way with her hip. Kevin just laughs, though, and pats her on the head.

When Travis gets back, Nolan’s stretched out on the bed in her room, his eyes closed. She quickly changes into her pajamas and wraps up some of the ice in a t-shirt. His eye pops open when she gets close to the bed, so he’s not asleep, and he lets her arrange his head in her lap and gently set the ice on his eye.

“Thanks,” he says softly, and she gets a hand in his hair, wincing at the tangles.

“You’re welcome. I’m only going to say this once, so—thanks for having my back out there. Please never do it again, but…thanks.”

Nolan pats her thigh. “Always.”

“No, _not_ always, Patty. Did you not hear what I just fucking said? Do you have a concussion?”

He laughs, dislodging the ice, and she shakes her head.

* * *

As soon as Travis raps on Nolan’s hotel room door, he tugs her inside by the elbow and up into his arms.

“Fuck,” she breathes as her back hits the wall, hooking an arm around his neck for balance. She kisses him back, trying to catch up, and gets her legs around his waist.

“That,” he says, between kisses, “was torture.”

“Sorry,” she says, not meaning it in the least.

Nolan rearranges her weight in his arms and gets a hand up her shirt, tracing over the straps and the lace. “You can’t just…send me a picture of you in this and expect me to sit through an entire dinner.”

Her new lingerie had been delivered right before they left for the road trip, and she tucked a piece inside her suitcase at the last minute just in case she got a chance to use it. It took her a minute earlier that evening to figure out how to put it on correctly—the website called it a bodysuit? she’s not really sure what that means besides maybe “has too many straps”—but it looked pretty good, and she sent Nolan a picture right before they were supposed to meet their dinner group in the hotel lobby.

“I think I can, though,” Travis says, and he makes a noise into her mouth. “And if you put me down, I can take my clothes off so you can actually see it.”

When he does, she strips quickly, and he’s busy staring at her while she tugs his shirt over his head and gets him naked. She expects Nolan to head toward the bed, but he doesn’t, just picks her right back up and braces her against the wall again. She can work with this. It’s mot the most physically comfortable she’s ever been, but she can’t say it’s not hot. Easy to kiss like this, and she tugs Nolan closer by the hair.

“That guy at the bar was flirting with you,” he eventually pulls away to say.

“He was,” Travis agrees. She hadn’t exactly been discouraging it, either, because Nolan admitted to her once, after some cajoling, that he thought it might be hot if she let some guy flirt with her but then went home with him instead.

He shifts her weight and gets a hand free, nudging aside the fabric between her legs and sliding one finger inside her, quickly followed by another one. “God, you’re wet.”

“Yeah, cause the whole time I was talking to that guy?” she says into his ear. “I was thinking about you. Wishing I was talking to you instead, wishing I could have just sat in your lap right there at the bar. Thankful that I got to go home with somebody who actually knows how to fuck me. Because you do, right, baby?”

“Fuck,” he groans. “Yeah, of course I do.”

Travis unwinds her fingers from Nolan’s hair, finds his dick and squeezes, and he hisses into her mouth. “C’mon, do it. Please.”

“I need a—”

“Remember what we talked about?” she says, cutting him off with a kiss. “Few weeks ago?”

“Fuck,” Nolan says again, his forehead against hers. “I’ve never—”

“I know, me neither.” She wiggles her hips a little. “I really want to, though. You wanna?”

“That is the dumbest question you’ve ever asked me. You want me to go down on you or anything? Before?” he asks, and she smiles.

“Nah, you can do that after.”

Nolan curses under his breath, and while he holds her hips, Travis starts to inch herself down onto his dick—it’s like a fucking core workout. He feels hotter, without the condom, and this angle is different, and she gasps as she slides down another inch. His hands flex on her hips, his thumbs tucked under the straps of fabric there, and he’s breathing hard. He’s stronger than she is, he could easily take over, but the fact that he’s not makes her heart thump.

“Fuck,” she exhales, taking him in a little more. “Feels really good, baby.”

Nolan nods. He’s trembling a little. Travis is smaller than him but not actually _small_, and she doesn’t want to be the victim of a sex accident.

“Hang on, let’s move to the bed,” she says, pushing at his shoulder. He groans as he pulls out but obeys and sets her down on her feet. She gives herself a second, just to make sure her legs work, and goes to the bed. She goes to take off the bodysuit, but Nolan stops her, taking her hand in his and kissing her as he tips them both down onto the bed.

“Leave it on,” he says while he gets between her legs, and she laughs.

“Okay.” Travis pulls him down over her and tucks her face against his shoulder. “Come back here.”

He slides back inside her, and she groans, bending her legs so her knees are up by his ribs. “I’m not gonna last long,” Nolan admits, and she plays with the hair at the nape of his neck.

“I don’t care, just fuck me.”

She has to be in a particular sort of mood to be _fucked_, hard, but she is right now. And she’s never been able to come from it, but when she’s worked up like this every stroke increases the pressure in her gut and the anticipation of it. She’s probably going to come as soon as he gets his tongue on her.

Travis can actually feel it when he comes, which is strange and really hot, and she shivers at the feel of it when he pulls out. “Your turn,” he says, before kissing her, though he doesn’t move, and she palms his ass.

“If you make me come, you can fuck me again. Make more of a mess.”

“Jesus,” Nolan says into her neck before biting down. “How many times? Twice?”

“Yeah, baby, twice is good.”

Travis pushes at his shoulder, and he smiles as he goes. Everything is slicker than usual, and she feels weird and wet and open, but his mouth is warm, and he’s really good at this now, knows exactly what she likes.

She tells him, in explicit detail, just how good he is, and the first orgasm rolls through her, easy as anything. She usually needs a minute in between, but Nolan doesn’t really stop, holding her hips down as he licks her through the over-sensitivity. The second one is sharper and almost hurts, somehow, but still leaves her biting back sounds and arching up against his mouth.

He’s up on his knees and inside her again before Travis is even done coming, and she throws her arm over her face as she tries to catch her breath. “Holy shit.”

“You good?” Nolan asks, and she manages to nod.

His hands are all over her, palming her breasts and following the lacy straps of fabric with his fingers, and he eventually bends down to kiss her. He tastes like come, hers and his own, and Travis fits a hand over the nape of his neck to keep him there. He comes just like that, exhaling harshly into her mouth, and lets his weight settle over her as he stills.

He pulls out after a minute, and Travis squeezes her eyes shut at the feeling. She doesn’t…it feels like a fucking mess, but she also kind of likes it.

Nolan rolls to the side and immediately puts two fingers back inside her. It aches, and she doesn’t know whether she wants to squirm away from his fingers or just spread her legs and sink into it.

“Sore?”

“A little.” She pulls her leg up to her chest to give him more room. What the hell. “Feels good, though.”

“You sure?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re so wet.”

Travis is, she can hear it as he moves his fingers, more lazy and exploring than anything purposeful. It’s embarrassing, kinda, and again—she doesn’t know whether she wants to squirm away or sink into it.

“Fucking hot,” Nolan adds, and she closes her eyes.

“Yeah?”

“Wish I could do this all day.”

He slides his fingers out and rubs her clit, even though there’s barely any friction from how wet she is. But she’s over-sensitive enough that it doesn’t really matter, it feels like everything between her legs is one raw, exposed nerve. He goes back in, three fingers this time, and she thrashes in his grip, as much from the sound as from the stretch. “Oh, fuck.”

“Come on,” he whispers in her ear. “One more.”

“Then you gotta—”

“Gotta what?”

“Harder, baby.”

He hums but doesn’t speed up at all, just leisurely alternates between fucking her with his fingers and playing with her clit. He’s watching himself do it, and it makes her face flush with heat.

His palm is getting her clit with every stroke, and when she’s this close it’s totally enough. It feels like it’s building from the inside and out, and this orgasm is different, it just rolls over her and lasts forever. Travis has to twist and put her mouth against Nolan’s shoulder to muffle any sounds. She bites down, but he doesn’t complain.

“Fuck,” she whispers, and he kisses her hair, then her temple. It’s so gentle, such a contrast to what they just did, that she has to bite back a burst of hysterical laughter.

Finally, Travis rolls onto her back and scrubs her hands over her face. “All right, I need a shower, and you need to google how the fuck we can clean this thing.” Nolan laughs, and she smacks him on the arm. “Don’t fucking laugh, that part was _your_ idea, and you know how much this cost.”

“Okay, okay,” he says, reaching for his phone.

* * *

A buzzing noise brings Travis out of her nap, and she reaches blindly to turn her alarm off on her phone. She doesn’t always take an actual nap before games, but it’s always nice when she does.

She rolls over and pokes Nolan on the back. “You up?”

He nods without opening his eyes, so Travis swings out of bed and goes to take a shower.

Nolan comes into the bathroom several minutes later, and Travis clears a little spot in the foggy glass with her hand so she can see him better. “What’s up? Aren’t you getting in?”

He holds his phone up to the shower door, and she squints to see. It’s a picture she’s never seen before, of the two of them. It’s kind of grainy, clearly zoomed-in but still decent quality, and it’s not scandalous or anything, but it’s so _obvious_—Nolan’s hand is on her hip and he’s smiling at her, she’s touching his chest, her head tipped back. It was probably an innocent moment at normal speed, just the two of them passing each other on the way to the bar, but someone got lucky and captured the most intimate millisecond. Travis can barely look at it.

It’s from the night before, she realizes suddenly, when they were out with the guys, and she wants to throw up.

“What the fuck is that?”

“It’s everywhere.”

Travis stands there in shock as Nolan puts his phone down and undresses. He steps in the shower with her and wraps his arms around her back. His skin is cold against hers, compared to the steam in the shower, and she shivers.

“There’s also a video,” he says, and Travis pulls back.

“_What_? Of what?”

“Us kissing outside the bar. It’s kind of hard to tell it’s us, but. Not that hard.”

“Oh my god,” she says faintly. She _remembers_, she remembers looking around while they were waiting for an Uber and kissing him because she didn’t see anyone. “Wow. I’m so dumb.”

“No,” Nolan says sharply. “Fuck that fucking guy, who the fuck just takes video of people and puts it on Twitter or whatever. What an asshole.”

Travis nods, still shellshocked, and mechanically finishes her shower. She wraps herself in a towel and heads immediately for her phone. She has a _lot_ of messages, all of which she ignores, and it only takes her about two seconds to find the video.

Nolan was right—it’s dark in the video, but it’s definitely them. It’s nothing over-the-top, just an everyday kiss between two people clearly in a relationship, but like the picture, it’s so _obvious_.

Her phone starts buzzing while she’s looking at it, and Claude’s face fills the screen.

“I don’t know if I can talk to him right now,” Travis says, and Nolan snatches it right out of her hand and answers it himself.

“Yeah?” he says, as he wanders out of the room, then, “Of course I can answer her fucking phone.”

Travis flops back on her bed and takes a deep breath. She’s not really an anxious person by nature, but right now her heart is hammering so fucking hard she’s surprised she can’t see it. This is it, this is what she was afraid of. People will talk about her, they’ll crow about how they were right, that having women in the NHL was clearly a terrible idea. And it’ll set back every other woman in the league. Fucking great.

She takes another breath and resists the urge to google her name. All in all, things are fine, she reminds herself. She still has hockey, which she loves, and she still has Nolan, who she…also loves. Huh. She should probably tell him that.

As soon as Nolan comes back in, Travis sits up.

“Do you wanna break up?” she says abruptly, and he freezes in the doorway, blinking at her.

“No? Of course not. Why, do you?”

“No,” she admits. “I’m just—spiraling. Is he mad?”

Nolan sits on the bed next to her. “Who, G? No, he’s not mad.”

“Who else did you talk to?”

“Him, Fletch, some of the PR people.”

“Jesus Christ.” Travis cannot believe her personal life is an actual subject of discussion. “What’s the deal, what are we gonna do?”

“Well. We can ignore it, deny it, or, you know.” He shrugs. “Say it’s true.”

“How would we do that?”

“They wrote a statement.”

“Did they release it?” she asks, vaguely horrified, but Nolan shakes his head.

“Just if we want to. But someone wrote it.” He hands his phone to her. “They could’ve saved some words and just said, _don’t worry, they’re not just fucking_.”

Travis snorts and starts skimming it. Nolan’s right—mentions of _long-term committed relationship_ and _private personal lives_ and _utmost professionalism_. It’s a fine statement, but…

“What do you want to do?”

“Whatever you want,” he says immediately, and what she wants to do is cry, kind of, but that’s not helpful right now.

Travis runs both her hands through her still-damp hair. “Okay. Well I don’t think we can _deny_ it, that would be weird. And probably look bad, obviously.”

Nolan nods. “We don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.”

She winces. “But then—then everyone’s always gonna ask about it, or wonder about it, and every time we’re not just, like, alone in my apartment, I’m going to worry about who can see us.” She stares down at her hands. “I think we should just do it. Say it’s true. What do you think?”

“I said whatever you want,” he repeats.

“I’m serious, though, this is a big deal.”

“I know. I’m obviously fine with telling people, but it will affect you more so you should have the final decision.”

“Okay. Then I think we should do it.”

Rip the band-aid off or whatever. She’d rather this than _not_ confirm it and have everyone wonder about it and allude to it in every interview and spread rumors for the rest of her career.

“Okay,” Nolan says. He tucks her under his arm and reaches for his phone. “You want them to just put out the statement, or you want to do something else?”

Travis shrugs. “I don’t care, that’s fine.” She watches Nolan text someone and presses her cheek against his shoulder. “What if they trade one of us?”

“They won’t.”

“They _could_. We don’t have no-trades, we aren’t old enough.”

Nolan’s quiet for a second. “Then I’ll go wherever they send me, and we’ll still have summers and breaks. It would suck, but we could deal.”

“They’d trade me first,” Travis says. Sure, management says all the right things and is happy to trot her out as proof that they’re evolved or whatever, but her first batches of team gear came in a men’s large, and she had to pitch a fit to eventually get stuff in a women’s cut. There’s been a lot of things like that, so even though her jersey might be the team’s bestseller, she figures on the whole, she’s probably more of a hassle.

“No fucking way,” Nolan says, laughing. “But it doesn’t matter because we’re gonna win the Cup, and then no one will be able to say shit.”

“Fucking right.”

They have to hurry to get ready so they’re not late, and when they walk into the dressing room, most people fall silent. That’s probably not a good sign—she’d take crude jokes and _Just Married_ banners in their stalls over awkward silence. Being assholes means they’re fine with it.

“Hey,” Nolan says. Yells, actually. He never raises his voice in the room, ever, so everyone looks at him, Travis included. “Teeks and I are together, have been for a while. None of you assholes knew about it, and—”

“Hey!”

Nolan tips his head in Kevin’s direction. “One of you assholes knew about it. It didn’t affect the team then, and it won’t now. If you have a problem, talk to me.”

There’s a beat of silence before someone wolf-whistles, Travis thinks it’s Claude, and then it’s kind of a shitshow. Someone hugs her, there are wildly inappropriate questions being thrown around, and Jake shakes Nolan by the shoulders. “Bagged a fuckin’ stud, Patty! Who knew you had it in you.”

“Oh my god,” he mutters, heading for his stall, and Travis grins.

She gets ready for the game, suffers through a conversation with Claude about the whole thing—he’s very earnest and says he wishes they felt comfortable telling him earlier—and while they’re in the tunnel waiting to go onto the ice, Nolan comes up to her.

“They’re gonna say shit.”

Travis nods. She knows. “To you, too. Don’t—you can’t do anything, though.”

“No promises,” he says, and she smacks him across the shins with her stick.

“I’m fucking serious. This is the easiest fucking chirping material _ever_, you can’t let it get to you.” She taps him again. “Plus, you’re terrible at talking back, let me do it.”

Nolan’s face pinches, but he doesn’t exactly disagree.

All in all, it’s not her _best_ game. She gets a point—and so does Nolan—so it’s fine, but she’s a little distracted, busy imagining that every single person in the building is thinking about her personal life. Travis knows they’re not _actually_, she’s not that egotistical, but this is basically her worst case scenario and therefore she wants to throw up.

Her name isn’t on the board for media after the game, which is a true fucking miracle if she’s ever seen one, but Travis doesn’t stop to question it. She hurries through her post-game routine, half-expecting to get grabbed by the media relations people anyway, and goes out to the car to wait for Nolan.

She finally checks some her texts. One of her friends sent her an Instagram link, which she opens with a not-insignificant amount of trepidation, but it’s just from Nolan’s profile. He posted a picture of the two of them, and he must’ve done it just before the game. Travis smiles at it—it’s a cute picture, her sitting on his lap at that charity event they went to a while ago as he makes a face, even though she has no idea who took it.

There are also several messages of support from some of the other women in the league, which make her happier than she’d like to admit.

Nolan knocks on the passenger side window, making her jump, and she lets him in. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he says. “Doing okay?”

“Yeah. Survived, at least.” Travis turns the car on but doesn’t put it in gear. “How was your postgame? Did they ask about it?”

He shrugs. “I just kept saying that I wasn’t gonna talk about my personal life because it didn’t affect the team, and eventually they got bored with that answer.”

“Why didn’t I have to do media tonight?”

“Cause I yelled at them about it.”

“Patty.”

“I know.”

“You can’t—”

“_I know_,” he snaps. “Just…just let me take care of you every once in a while.”

Travis swallows and stares at her hands wrapped around the steering wheel. Her eyes feel hot. He does take care of her, all the time, does he not know that?

“I love you, you know.” Embarrassingly, her voice comes out kind of creaky. “Was thinking about it earlier, realized I should tell you.”

Nolan laughs a little, which is maybe not what she would have expected, but he tugs at her elbow until she looks at him. “I love you, too, obviously.”

“Obviously,” she parrots, and she’s smiling when he kisses her.

* * *

_Three years later_

Travis has watched a lot of teams win the Cup—mostly on TV, one very memorable time from the other side of the ice. She’s also heard a lot of guys talk about winning the Cup, how emotional it is, how the rush of pure euphoric joy is unlike anything else.

But no one’s ever mentioned how unbelievably, incredibly, fucking _overwhelming _it is.

The goal was the easy part. Game six, tied, five minutes left in the third. Nolan swiped the puck off some poor unsuspecting defenseman, powered through the neutral zone, and sent her a pass that she telegraphed perfectly because she knows him as well as she knows herself, almost. After that, it was just forehand, backhand, five hole, easy as pie. She’s done it a million times.

Travis will swear until her dying day that she heard Nolan first, heard his yell before and above anyone else’s. She doesn’t know whether it was because the entire city of Philadelphia took an extra quarter-second to comprehend what was happening or if he just knew the puck was going in before she actually did it.

_That _feeling, the one right there, was the euphoric joy everyone talks about, she thinks. Then came the agonizing wait, the longest five minutes of game play in her entire life, before the clock finally ticked down to zero. Humans just aren’t capable of processing that much positive emotion at one time, she’s pretty sure, because she can’t even contain it all.

The Cup comes out, and Claude has tears in his eyes and they all get their turns with it, and Travis wants to yell at everyone to just _slow down for a second_ and let her actually take in what’s going on.

Nolan hugs her, for about the hundredth time since the final buzzer, but this time she hangs on and lets herself cry a little into his neck. His beard is the worst thing she’s ever seen.

“You did it.”

“_We _did it,” she corrects, and Nolan shakes his head.

“You did it. First female player with her name on the Cup.”

Travis laughs. “At least no one else will be able to talk about that fucking curse anymore.”

Ever since women came into the NHL, no team with a woman has ever won the Cup, and it’s somehow become the most believed curse in the league, more than the curse of the President’s Trophy or the curse of touching the conference trophies. But it’s _not_ a curse, which Travis has said to every single reporter who’s asked her about it over the course of her career and especially over the past several weeks, and now she has proof.

“Think the Cup can come to the wedding?” Nolan asks, and she laughs through the tears.

“It’ll be there, I don’t care if I have to steal it. Gritty would help me.”

Travis doesn’t know if it’s really appropriate to call it a _wedding_, since they’re just planning to elope with their immediate family only. She will most definitely not be wearing white, and she doubts Nolan will wear a tie. It’s happening this summer, though, even if they’re still arguing about where it’s going to be. But the Cup will be there, and Nolan will be there, and who needs anything else?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is that ending sappy as fuck? y e s. don't care ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> _thank you_ so much to everyone who read this <3 hope you're all doing as well as you can right now!


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